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COURTS,  CRIMINALS,  AND 
THE  CAMORRA 


COURTS,   CRIMINALS 
AND  THE  CAMORRA 


BY 
ARTHUR  TRAIN 

Formerly  Assistant  District  Attorney,  New  York  County 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1912 


COPYRIGHT,  1912,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  September,  1912 


To 
CHARLES  ALBERT  PERKINS 

OF   THE   NEW   YORK   BAB 


756C44 


CONTENTS 

I.— COURTS 

PAGB 

I.     THE  PLEASANT  FICTION  OF  THE  PRESUMP- 
TION OF  INNOCENCE »  3 

II.     PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE  FOR  TRIAL  27 

III.  SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS     .     *  53 

II.— CRIMINALS 

IV.  WHY  Do  MEN  KILL?      ......  67 

V.     DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 86 

VI.     DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 112 

III.— THE  CAMORRA 

VII.     THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 143 

VIII.     AN  AMERICAN  LAWYER  AT  VITERBO     .     .  184 

IX.     THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA  214 


COURTS 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  PLEASANT  FICTION  OF  THE  PRESUMPTION 
OF  INNOCENCE 

THERE  was  a  great  to-do  some  years  ago  in  the  city 
of  New  York  over  an  ill-omened  young  person,  Duffy 
by  name,  who,  falling  into  the  bad  graces  of  the  po- 
lice, was  most  incontinently  dragged  to  head-quarters 
and  "mugged"  without  so  much  as  "By  your  leave, 
sir,"  on  the  part  of  the  authorities.  Having  been 
photographed  and  measured  (in  most  humiliating 
fashion)  he  was  turned  loose  with  a  gratuitous  warn- 
ing to  behave  himself  in  the  future  and  see  to  it  that 
he  did  nothing  which  might  gain  him  even  more 
invidious  treatment. 

Now,  although  many  thousands  of  equally  harm- 
less persons  had  been  similarly  treated,  this  particu- 
lar outrage  was  made  the  occasion  of  a  vehement 
protest  to  the  mayor  of  the  city  by  a  certain  mem- 
ber of  the  judiciary,  who  pointed  out  that  such 
things  in  a  civilized  community  were  shocking  be- 
yond measure,  and  called  upon  the  mayor  to  remove 
the  commissioner  of  police  and  all  his  staff  of 
deputy  commissioners  for  openly  violating  the  law 
which  they  were  sworn  to  uphold.  But,  the  com- 
missioner of  police,  who  has  sometimes  enforced 
the  penal  statutes  in  a  way  that  has  made  him  un- 

3 


4     THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

popular  with  machine  politicians,  saw  nothing  wrong 
in  what  he  had  done,  and,  what  was  more,  said  so 
most  outspokenly.  The  judge  said,  "You  did/'  and 
the  commissioner  said,  "I  didn't."  Specifically,  the 
judge  was  complaining  of  what  had  been  done  to 
Duffy,  but  more  generally  he  was  charging  the  po- 
lice with  despotism  and  oppression  and  with  sys- 
tematically disregarding  the  sacred  liberties  of  the 
citizens  which  it  was  their  duty  to  protect. 

Accordingly  the  mayor  decided  to  look  into  the 
matter  for  himself,  and  after  a  lengthy  investigation 
came  to  the  alleged  conclusion  that  the  "mugging" 
of  Duffy  was  a  most  reprehensible  thing  and  that  all 
those  who  were  guilty  of  having  any  part  therein 
should  be  instantly  removed  from  office.  He,  there- 
fore, issued  a  pronunciamento  to  the  commissioner 
demanding  the  official  heads  of  several  of  his  sub- 
ordinates, which  order  the  commissioner  politely 
declined  to  obey.  The  mayor  thereupon  removed 
him  and  appointed  a  successor,  ostensibly  for  the 
purpose  of  having  in  the  office  a  man  who  should 
conduct  the  police  business  of  the  city  with  more  re- 
gard for  the  liberties  of  the  inhabitants  thereof.  The 
judge  who  had  started  the  rumpus  expressed  him- 
self as  very  much  pleased  and  declared  that  now^  at 
last  a  new  era  had  dawned  wherein  the  government 
was  to  be  administered  with  a  due  regard  for  law. 

Now,  curiously  enough,  although  the  judge  had 
demanded  the  removal  of  the  commissioner  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  violated  the  law  and  been  guilty 
of  tyrannous  and  despotic  conduct,  the  mayor  had 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE     5 

ousted  him  not  for  pursuing  an  illegal  course  in  ar- 
resting and  "mugging"  a  presumptively  innocent 
man  (for  illegal  it  most  undoubtedly  was),  but  for 
inefficiency  and  maladministration  in  his  department. 
Said  the  mayor  in  his  written  opinion: 

"After  thinking  over  this  matter  with  the  greatest  care, 
I  am  led  to  the  conclusion  that  as  mayor  of  the  city  of  New 
York  I  should  not  order  the  police  to  stop  taking  photographs 
of  people  arrested  and  accused  of  crime  or  who  have  been 
indicted  by  grand  juries.  That  grave  injustice  may  occur 
the  Duffy  case  has  demonstrated,  but  I  feel  that  it  is  not  the 
taking  of  the  photograph  that  has  given  cause  to  the  injustice, 
but  the  inefficiency  and  maladministration  of  the  police  de- 
partment, etc." 

In  other  words,  the  mayor  set  the  seal  of  his  official 
approval  upon  the  very  practice  which  caused  the 
injustice  to  Duffy.  "Mugging"  was  all  right,  so 
long  as  you  "mugged"  the  right  persons. 

The  situation  thus  outlined  is  one  of  more  than 
passing  interest.  Whatever  the  merely  political  out- 
come may  be,  and  it  may  be  far-reaching,  a  sensitive 
point  in  our  governmental  nervous  system  has  been 
touched  and  a  condition  uncovered  that  sooner  or 
later  must  be  diagnosed  and  cured. 

For  the  police  have  no  right  to  arrest  and  photo- 
graph a  citizen  unconvicted  of  crime,  since  it  is  con- 
trary to  law.  And  it  is  ridiculous  to  assert  that  the 
very  guardians  of  the  law  may  violate  it  so  long  as 
they  do  so  judiciously  and  do  not  molest  the  Duffys. 
The  trouble  goes  deeper  than  that. 

The  truth  is  that  we  are  up  against  that  most  deli- 


6     THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

cate  of  situations,  the  concrete  adjustment  of  a  theo- 
retical individual  right  to  a  practical  necessity.  The 
same  difficulty  has  always  existed  and  will  always 
continue  to  exist  whenever  emergencies  requiring 
prompt  and  decisive  action  arise  or  conditions  obtain 
that  must  be  handled  effectively  without  too  much 
discussion.  It  is  easy  while  sitting  on  a  piazza  with 
your  cigar  to  recognize  the  rights  of  your  fellow-men, 
but  if  you  were  starving  on  the  high  seas  in  an  open 
boat — !  You  may  assert  most  vigorously  the  right 
of  the  citizen  to  immunity  from  arrest  without  legal 
cause,  but  if  you  saw  a  seedy  character  sneaking 
down  a  side  street  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
his  pockets  bulging  with  jewelry  and  silver — !  Que 
voulez  vous,  m'sieu?  Would  you  have  the  police- 
man on  post  insist  on  the  fact  that  a  burglary  had 
been  committed  being  established  beyond  perad- 
venture  before  arresting  the  suspect,  who  in  the 
meantime  would  undoubtedly  escape?  Of  course, 
the  worthy  officer  sometimes  does  this,  but  his  con- 
duct in  that  case  becomes  the  subject  of  an  investiga- 
tion on  the  part  of  his  superiors.  In  fact,  the  rules 
of  the  New  York  police  department  require  him  to 
arrest  all  persons  carrying  bags  in  the  small  hours 
who  cannot  give  a  satisfactory  account  of  themselves. 
Yet  there  is  no  such  thing  under  the  laws  of  the  State 
as  a  right  "to  arrest  on  suspicion."  No  citizen  may 
be  arrested  Bunder  the  statutes  unless  a  crime  has 
actually  been  committed.  Thus/ the  police  regulations 
deliberately  compel  every  officer  either  to  violate  the 
law  or  to  be  made  the  subject  of  charges  for  dere- 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE     7 

liction  of  duty.  A  confusing  state  of  things,  truly,  to 
a  man  who  wants  to  do  his  duty  by  himself  and  by 
his  fellow-citizens! 

The  present  author  once  wrote  a  book  dealing 
with  the  practical  administration  of  criminal  justice, 
in  which  the  unlawfulness  of  arrest  on  mere  "sus- 
picion" was  discussed  at  length  and  given  a  prom- 
inent place.  But  when  the  time  came  for  publica- 
tion that  portion  of  it  was  omitted  at  the  earnest 
solicitation  of  certain  of  the  authorities  on  the  ground 
that  as  such  arrests  were  absolutely  necessary  for 
the  enforcement  of  the  criminal  law  a  public  exposi- 
tion of  their  illegality  would  do  infinite  harm.  Now, 
as  it  seems,  the  time  has  come  when  the  facts,  for 
one  reason  or  another,  must  be  faced.  The  diffi- 
culty does  not  end,  however,  with  "arrest  on  sus- 
picion," "the  third  degree,"  "mugging,"  or  their 
allied  abuses.  It  really  goes  to  the  root  of  our  whole 
theory  of  the  administration  of  the  criminal  law.  Is 
it  possible  that  on  final  analysis  we  may  find  that 
our  enthusiastic  insistence  upon  certain  of  the  sup- 
posedly fundamental  liberties  of  the  individual  has 
led  us  into  a  condition  of  legal  hypocrisy  vastly  less 
desirable  than  the  frank  attitude  of  our  continental 
neighbors  toward  such  subjects? 

The  Massachusetts  Constitution  of  1785  concludes 
with  the  now  famous  words:  "To  the  end  that  this 
may  be  a  government  of  laws  and  not  of  men."  That 
is  the  essence  of  the  spirit  of  American  government. 
Our  forefathers  had  arisen  and  thrown  off  the  yoke 
of  England  and  her  intolerable  system  of  penal  gov- 


8     THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

eminent,  in  which  an  accused  had  no  right  to  tes- 
tify in  his  own  behalf  and  under  which  he  could  be 
hung  for  stealing  a  sheep.  "  Liberty ! "  "  Liberty  or 
death!"  That  was  the  note  ringing  in  the  minds 
and  mouths  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  and 
framers  of  the  Constitution.  That  is  the  popular 
note  to-day  of  the  Fourth  of  July  orator  and  of  the 
Memorial  Day  address.  This  liberty  was  to  be 
guaranteed  by  laws  in  such  a  way  that  it  was  never 
to  be  curtailed  or  violated.  No  mere  man  was  to 
be  given  an  opportunity  to  tamper  with  it.  The  in- 
dividual was  to  be  protected  at  all  costs.  No  king, 
or  sheriff,  or  judge,  or  officer  was  to  lay  his  finger 
on  a  free  man  save  at  his  peril.  If  he  did,  the  free 
man  might  immediately  have  his  "law" — "have 
the  law  on  him,"  as  the  good  old  expression  was — 
for  no  king  or  sheriff  was  above  the  law.  In  fact, 
we  were  so  energetic  in  providing  safeguards  for  the 
individual,  even  when  a  wrong-doer,  that  we  paid 
very  little  attention  to  the  effectiveness  of  kings  or 
sheriffs  or  what  we  had  substituted  for  them.  And 
so  it  is  to-day.  What  candidate  for  office,  what 
silver-tongued  orator  or  senator,  what  demagogue 
or  preacher  could  hold  his  audience  or  capture  a 
vote  if,  when  it  came  to  a  question  of  liberty,  he 
should  lift  up  his  voice  in  behalf  of  the  rights  of  the 
majority  as  against  the  individual?  The  Republi- 
can party— "The  Grand  Old  Party  of  Liberty!" 
The  Democratic  party — "The  Party  of  Liberty!" 
The  Socialist-Labor  party— "of  Liberty."  "Liberty 
forever!" 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE     9 

Accordingly  in  devising  our  laws  we  have  pro- 
vided in  every  possible  way  for  the  freedom  of  the 
citizen  from  all  interference  on  the  part  of  the 
authorities.  No  one  may  be  stopped,  interrogated, 
examined,  or  arrested  unless  a  crime  has  been  com- 
mitted. Every  one  is  presumed  to  be  innocent  until 
shown  to  be  guilty  by  the  verdict  of  a  jury.  No 
one's  premises  may  be  entered  or  searched  without 
a  warrant  which  the  law  renders  it  difficult  to  ob- 
tain. Every  accused  has  the  right  to  testify  in  his 
own  behalf,  like  any  other  witness.  The  fact  that 
he  has  been  held  for  a  crime  by  a  magistrate  and 
indicted  by  a  grand  jury  places  him  at  not  the 
slightest  disadvantage  so  far  as  defending  himself 
against  the  charge  is  concerned,  for  he  must  be  proven 
guilty  beyond  any  reasonable  doubt.  These  illustra- 
tions of  the  jealousy  of  the  law  for  the  rights  of  citi- 
zens might  be  multiplied  to  no  inconsiderable  extent. 
Further,  our  law  allows  a  defendant  convicted  of 
crime  to  appeal  to  the  highest  courts,  whereas  if  he 
be  acquitted  the  people  or  State  have  no  right  of 
appeal  at  all. 

Without  dwelling  further  on  the  matter  it  is  enough 
to  say  that  in  general  the  State  constitutions,  their 
general  laws,  or  penal  statutes  provide  that  a  person 
who  is  accused  or  suspected  of  crime  must  be  pre- 
sumed innocent  and  treated  accordingly  until  his  guilt 
has  been  affirmatively  established  in  a  jury  trial; 
that  meantime  he  must  not  be  confined  or  detained 
unless  a  crime  has  in  fact  been  committed  and  there 
is  at  least  reasonable  cause  to  believe  that  he  has 


10    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

committed  it;  and,  further,  that  if  arrested  he  must 
be  given  an  immediate  opportunity  to  secure  bail,  to 
have  the  advice  of  counsel,  and  must  in  no  way  be 
compelled  to  give  any  evidence  against  himself.  So 
much  for  the  law.  It  is  as  plain  as  a  pikestaff.  It 
is  printed  in  the  books  in  words  of  one  syllable.  So 
far  as  the  law  is  concerned  we  have  done  our  best 
to  perpetuate  the  theories  of  those  who,  fearing  that 
they  might  be  arrested  without  a  hearing,  trans- 
ported for  trial,  and  convicted  in  a  king's  court  be- 
fore a  king's  judge  for  a  crime  they  knew  nothing 
of,  insisted  on  "liberty  or  death."  They  had  had 
enough  of  kings  and  their  ways.  Hereafter  they  were 
to  have  "a  government  of  laws  and  not  of  men." 

But  the  unfortunate  fact  remains  that  all  laws, 
however  perfect,  must  in  the  end  be  administered  by 
imperfect  men.  There  is,  alas!  no  such  thing  as  a 
government  of  laws  and  not  of  men.  You  may  have 
a  government  more  of  laws  and  less  of  men,  or  vice 
versa,  but  you  cannot  have  an  auto-administration 
of  the  Golden  Rule.  Sooner  or  later  you  come  to  a 
man — in  the  White  House,  or  on  a  wool  sack,  or  at  a 
desk  in  an  office,  or  in  a  blue  coat  and  brass  buttons — 
and  then,  to  a  very  considerable  extent,  the  question 
of  how  far  ours  is  to  be  a  government  of  laws  or  of 
men  depends  upon  him.  Generally,  so  far  as  he  is 
concerned,  it  is  going  to  be  of  man,  for  every  official 
finds  that  the  letter  of  the  law  works  an  injustice 
many  times  out  of  a  hundred.  If  he  is  worth  his  sal- 
ary he  will  try  to  temper  justice  with  mercy.  If  he 
is  human  he  will  endeavor  to  accomplish  justice  as  he 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    11 

sees  it  so  long  as  the  law  can  be  stretched  to  accom- 
modate the  case.  Thus,  inevitably  there  is  a  conflict 
between  the  theory  of  the  law  and  its  application.  It 
is  the  human  element  in  the  administration  of  the 
law  that  enables  lawyers  to  get  a  living.  It  is  usually 
not  difficult  to  tell  what  the  law  is;  the  puzzle  is  how 
it  is  going  to  be  applied  in  any  individual  case.  How 
it  is  going  to  be  applied  depends  very  largely  upon 
the  practical  side  of  the  matter  and  the  exigencies 
of  existing  conditions. 

It  is  pretty  hard  to  apply  inflexibly  laws  over  a 
hundred  years  old.  It  is  equally  hard  to  police  a 
city  of  a  million  or  so  polyglot  inhabitants  with  a  - 
due  regard  to  their  theoretic  constitutional  rights. 
But  suppose  in  addition  that  these  theoretic  rights 
are  entirely  theoretic  and  fly  in  the  face  of  the  laws 
of  nature,  experience,  and  common  sense?  What 
then?  As  the  missionary  said,  "The  cannibals  are 
coming  behind,  there  is  a  lion  in  front,  there  are 
sharks  in  the  water,  I  can't  swim  anyway — what  in 
hell  am  I  to  do?"  What  is  a  police  commissioner  to 
do  who  has  either  got  to  make  an  illegal  arrest  or 
let  a  crook  get  away,  who  must  violate  the  rights  of 
men  illegally  detained  by  outrageously  "mugging77 
them  or  egregiously  fail  to  have  a  record  of  the  pro- 
fessional criminals  in  his  bailiwick?  He  does  just 
what  all  of  us  do  when  we  are  "up  against  it," — he 
"takes  a  chance.7'  But  in  the  case  of  the  police  the 
thing  is  so  necessary  that  there  ceases  practically 
to  be  any  "chance77  about  it.  They  have  got  to  pre- 
vent crime  and  arrest  criminals.  If  they  fail  they 


12    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

are  out  of  a  job,  and  others  more  capable  or  less 
scrupulous  take  their  places.  The  fundamental  law 
qualifying  all  systems  is  that  of  necessity.  You  can't 
let  professional  crooks  carry  off  a  voter's  silverware 
simply  because  the  voter,  being  asleep,  is  unable  in- 
stantly to  demonstrate  beyond  a  reasonable  doubt 
that  his  silver  has  been  stolen.  You  can't  permit 
burglars  to  drag  sacks  of  loot  through  the  streets 
of  the  city  at  4  A.  M.  simply  because  they  are  pre- 
sumed to  be  innocent  until  proven  guilty.  And 
if  "arrest  on  suspicion"  were  not  permitted,  de- 
manded by  the  public,  and  required  by  the  police 
ordinances,  away  would  go  the  crooks  and  off  would 
go  the  silverware,  the  town  would  be  full  of  "leather 
snatchers"  and  "strong-arm  men,"  respectable  citi- 
zens would  be  afraid  to  go  out  o'  nights,  and  liberty 
would  degenerate  into  license.  That  is  the  point.  We 
Americans,  or  at  least  the  newer  ones  of  us,  have  a 
fixed  idea  that  "liberty"  means  the  right  to  steal 
apples  from  our  neighbor's  orchard  without  inter- 
ference. Now,  somewhere  or  other,  there  has  got 
to  be  a  switch  and  a  strong  arm  to  keep  us  in  order, 
and  the  switch  and  arm  must  not  wait  until  the  apples 
are  stolen  and  eaten  before  getting  busy.  If  we  come 
climbing  over  the  fence  sweating  apples  at  every 
pore,  is  Farmer  Jones  to  go  and  count  his  apples 
before  grabbing  us? 

The  most  presumptuous  of  all  presumptions  is  this 
"presumption  of  innocence."  It  really  doesn't  ex- 
ist, save  in  the  mouths  of  judges  and  in  the  pages  of 
law  books.  Yet  as  much  to-do  is  made  about  it  as 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    13 

if  it  were  a  living  legal  principle.  Every  judge  in  a 
criminal  case  is  required  to  charge  the  jury  in  form 
or  substance  somewhat  as  follows:  "The  defendant 
is  presumed  to  be  innocent  until  that  presumption 
is  removed  by  competent  evidence."  .  .  .  "This 
presumption  is  his  property,  remaining  with  him 
throughout  the  trial  and  until  rebutted  by  the 
verdict  of  the  jury."  .  .  .  "The  jury  has  no  right 
to  consider  the  fact  that  the  defendant  stands  at 
the  bar  accused  of  a  crime  by  an  indictment  found 
by  the  grand  jury."  Shades  of  Sir  Henry  Hawkins! 
Does  the  judge  expect  that  they  are  actually  to 
swallow  that?  Here  is  a  jury  sworn  "to  a  true 
verdict  find"  in  the  case  of  an  ugly  looking  cus- 
tomer at  the  bar  who  is  charged  with  knocking 
down  an  old  man  and  stealing  his  watch.  The  old 
man — an  apostolic  looking  octogenarian — is  sitting 
right  over  there  where  the  jury  can  see  him.  One 
look  at  the  plaintiff  and  one  at  the  accused  and 
the  jury  may  be  heard  to  mutter,  "He's  guilty, — 
all  right!" 

"Presumed  to  be  innocent?"  Why,  may  I  ask? 
Don't  the  jury  and  everybody  else  know  that  this 
good  old  man  would  never,  save  by  mistake,  accuse 
anybody  falsely  of  crime?  Innocence!  Why,  the 
natural  and  inevitable  presumption  is  that  the  de- 
fendant is  guilty!  The  human  mind  works  intuitively 
by  comparison  and  experience.  We  assume  or  pre- 
sume with  considerable  confidence  that  parents  love 
their  children,  that  all  college  presidents  are  great 
and  good  men,  and  that  wild  bulls  are  dangerous 


14    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

animals.  We  may  be  wrong.  But  it  is  up  to  the 
other  fellow  to  show  us  the  contrary. 

Now,  if  out  of  a  clear  sky  Jones  accuses  Robinson 
of  being  a  thief  we  know  by  experience  that  the 
chances  are  largely  in  favor  of  Jones's  accusation 
being  well  founded.  People  as  a  rule  don't  go  rush- 
ing around  charging  each  other  with  being  crooks 
unless  they  have  some  reason  for  it.  Thus,  at  the 
very  beginning  the  law  flies  in  the  face  of  probabil- 
ities when  it  tells  us  that  a  man  accused  of  crime  must 
be  presumed  to  be  innocent.  In  point  of  fact,  what- 
ever presumption  there  is  (and  this  varies  with  the 
circumstances)  is  all  the  other  way,  greater  or  less 
depending  upon  the  particular  attitude  of  mind  and 
experience  of  the  individual. 

This  natural  presumption  of  guilt  from  the  mere 
fact  of  tHe  charge  is  rendered  all  the  more  likely  by 
reason  of  the  uncharitable  readiness  with  which  we 
believe  evil  of  our  fellows.  How  unctuously  we  re- 
peat some  hearsay  bit  of  scandal.  "I  suppose  you 
have  heard  the  report  that  Deacon  Smith  has  stolen 
the  church  funds?"  we  say  to  our  friends  with  a  sen- 
tentious sigh — the  outward  sign  of  an  invisible  satis- 
faction. Deacon  Smith  after  the  money-bag?  Ha! 
ha!  Of  course,  he's  guilty!  These  deacons  are  al- 
ways guilty!  And  in  a  few  minutes  Deacon  Smith 
is  ruined  forever,  although  the  fact  of  the  matter  is 
that  he  was  but  counting  the  money  in  the  collection- 
plate.  This  willingness  to  believe  the  worst  of  others 
is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  and  of  historical 
and  literary  record.  "The  evil  that  men  do  lives 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    15 

after  them — "  It  might  well  have  been  put,  "The 
evil  men  are  said  to  have  done  lives  forever."  How- 
ever unfair,  this  is  a  psychologic  condition  which 
plays  an  important  part  in  rendering  the  presump- 
tion of  innocence  a  gross  absurdity. 

But  let  us  press  the  history  of  Jones  and  Robinson 
a  step  further.  The  next  event  in  the  latter's  crim- 
inal history  is  his  appearance  in  court  before  a  magis- 
trate. Jones  produces  his  evidence  and  calls  his  wit- 
nesses. Robinson,  through  his  learned  counsel,  cross- 
examines  them  and  then  summons  his  own  witnesses 
to  prove  his  innocence.  The  proceeding  may  take 
several  days  or  perhaps  weeks.  Briefs  are  submitted. 
The  magistrate  considers  the  testimony  at  great 
length  and  finally  decides  that  he  believes  Robinson 
guilty  and  must  hold  him  for  the  action  of  the  grand 
jury.  You  might  now,  it  would  perhaps  seem,  have 
some  reason  for  suspecting  that  Robinson  was  not 
all  that  he  should  be.  But  no !  He  is  still  presumed 
in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  and  theoretically  in  the  eyes 
of  his  fellows,  to  be  as  innocent  as  a  babe  unborn. 
And  now  the  grand  jury  take  up  and  sift  the  evidence 
that  has  already  been  gone  over  by  the  police  judge. 
They,  too,  call  witnesses  and  take  additional  testi- 
mony. They  likewise  are  convinced  of  Robinson's 
guilt  and  straightway  hand  down  an  indictment  ac- 
cusing him  of  the  crime.  A  bench  warrant  issues. 
The  defendant  is  run  to  earth  and  ignominiously 
haled  to  court.  But  he  is  still  presumed  to  be  inno- 
cent! Does  not  the  law  say  so?  And  is  not  this  a 
"government  of  laws"?  Finally,  the  district  attor- 


16    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

ney;  who  is  not  looking  for  any  more  work  than  is 
absolutely  necessary,  investigates  the  case  and  be- 
gins to  prepare  it  for  trial.  As  the  facts  develop 
themselves  Robinson's  guilt  becomes  more  and  more 
clear.  The  unfortunate  defendant  is  given  any  op- 
portunity he  may  desire  to  explain  away  the  charge, 
but  to  no  purpose.  .f 

The  district  attorney  knows  Robinson  is  guilty, 
so  does  everybody  else,  including  Robinson.  At  last 
this  presumably  innocent  man  is  brought  to  the  bar 
for  trial.  The  jury  scan  his  hang-dog  countenance 
upon  which  guilt  is  plainly  written.  They  contrast 
his  appearance  with  that  of  the  honest  Jones.  They 
know  he  has  been  accused,  held  by  a  magistrate,  in- 
dicted by  a  grand  jury,  and  that  his  case,  after  care- 
ful scrutiny,  has  been  pressed  for  trial  by  the  public 
prosecutor.  Do  they  really  presume  him  innocent? 
Not  much!  They  presume  him  guilty.  And  if  by 
any  chance  Robinson  puts  in  any  defence,  they  re- 
quire him,  as  a  practical  matter,  to  prove  himself 
innocent.  "So  soon  as  I  see  him  come  through  dot 
leetle  door  hi  the  back  of  the  room,  then  I  know  he's 
guilty!"  as  the  foreman  said  in  the  old  story.  What 
good  does  the  presumption  of  innocence,  so  called, 
do  for  the  miserable  Robinson?  None  whatever 
— save  perhaps  to  console  him  in  the  long  days  pend- 
ing his  trial.  But  such  a  legal  hypocrisy  could  never 
have  deceived  anybody.  How  much  better  it  would 
be  to  cast  aside  all  such  cant  and  frankly  admit  that 
the  attitude  of  the  continental  law  toward  the  man 
under  arrest  is  founded  upon  common  sense  and  the 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    17 

experience  of  mankind.  If  he  is  the  wrong  man  it 
should  not  be  difficult  for  him  to  demonstrate  the 
fact.  At  any  rate  circumstances  are  against  him, 
and  he  should  be  ready  to  explain  them  away  if  he  can. 
The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  that  in  dealing  with 
practical  conditions,  police  methods  differ  very  little 
in  different  countries.  The  authorities  may  perhaps 
keep  considerably  more  detailed  and  obvious  "tabs" 
on  us  in  Germany  and  Russia  than  in  the  United 
States,  but  if  we  are  once  caught  in  a  compromising 
position  we  experience  about  the  same  treatment 
wherever  we  happen  to  be.  In  France  (and  how  the 
apostles  of  liberty  condemn  the  iniquity  of  the  ad- 
ministration of  criminal  justice  in  that  country !)  the 
suspect  or  undesirable  receives  a  polite  official  call 
or  note,  in  which  he  is  invited  to  leave  the  locality 
as  soon  as  convenient.  In  New  York  he  is  arrested 
by  a  plain-clothes  man,  yanked  down  to  Mulberry 
Street  for  the  night,  and  next  afternoon  is  thrust  down 
the  gangplank  of  a  just  departing  Fall  River  liner. 
Many  an  inspector  (without  mentioning  names)  has 
earned  unstinted  praise  (even  from  the  New  York 
Evening  Post)  by  "clearing  New  York  of  crooks'7  or 
having  a  sort  of  "round-up"  of  suspicious  characters 
whom,  after  proper  identification,  he  has  ejected  from 
the  city  by  the  shortest  and  quickest  possible  route. 
Yet  in  the  case  of  every  person  thus  arrested  and 
driven  out  of  the  town  he  has  undoubtedly  violated 
constitutional  rights  and  taken  the  law  into  his  own 
hands.  What  crimes  are  committed  in  the  name  of 
law,  0  Liberty! 


18    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

What  redress  can  a  penniless  tramp  secure  against 
a  stout  inspector  of  police  able  and  willing  to  spend 
a  considerable  sum  of  money  in  his  own  defence,  and 
with  the  entire  force  ready  and  eager  to  get  at  the 
tramp  and  put  him  out  of  business?  He  swallows 
his  pride,  if  he  has  any,  and  ruefully  slinks  out  of 
town  for  a  period  of  enforced  abstinence  from  the 
joys  of  metropolitan  existence.  Yet  who  shall  say 
that,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  a  theoretic  out- 
rage upon  liberty,  this  cleaning  out  of  the  city  is  not 
highly  desirable?  One  or  two  comparatively  inno- 
cent men  may  be  caught  in  the  ruck,  but  they 
generally  manage  to  intimate  to  the  police  that  the 
latter  have  "got  them  wrong"  and  duly  make  their 
escape.  The  others  resume  their  tramp  from  city  to 
city,  clothed  in  the  presumption  of  their  innocence. 

Since  the  days  of  the  Doges  or  of  the  Spanish  In- 
quisition there  has  never  been  anything  like  the 
morning  inspection  of  arrested  suspects  at  the  New 
York  police  head-quarters.*  One  by  one  the  unfort- 
unate persons  arrested  during  the  previous  night 
(although  not  charged  with  any  crime)  are  pointed 
out  to  the  assembled  detective  force,  who  scan  them 
from  beneath  black  velvet  masks  in  order  that 
they  themselves  may  not  be  recognized  when  they 
meet  again  on  Broadway  or  the  darker  side  streets 
of  the  city.  Each  prisoner  is  described  and  his  char- 
acter and  past  performances  are  rehearsed  by  the 
inspector  or  head  of  the  bureau.  He  is  then  meas- 
ured, "mugged,"  and,  if  lucky,  turned  loose.  What 

*  Now  abolished. 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    19 

does  his  liberty  amount  to  or  his  much-vaunted  legal 
rights  if  the  city  is  to  be  made  safe?  Yet  why  does 
not  some  apostle  of  liberty  raise  his  voice  and  cry 
aloud  concerning  the  wrong  that  has  been  done? 
Are  not  the  rights  of  a  beggar  as  sacred  as  those  of 
a  bishop?  Yea,  verily,  and  the  statutes  say  plainly 
and  have  said  plainly  for  years  that  no  one  shall  be 
arrested  unless  a  crime  has  been  committed. 

One  of  the  most  sacred  rights  guaranteed  to  those 
of  us  who  can  afford  to  pay  for  it  under  the  law  is 
that  of  not  being  compelled  to  give  evidence  against 
ourselves  or  to  testify  to  anything  which  might  de- 
grade or  incriminate  us.  'Tse  not  compelled  to  dis- 
criminate against  myself!"  as  the  old  darkey,  who 
knew  his  rights  very  well,  said.  Now,  this  is  all  very 
fine  for  the  chap  who  has  his  lawyer  at  his  elbow  or 
has  had  some  similar  previous  experience.  He  may 
wisely  shut  up  like  a  clam  and  set  at  defiance  the 
tortures  of  the  third  degree.  But  how  about  the  poor 
fellow  arrested  on  suspicion  of  having  committed  a 
murder,  who  has  never  heard  of  the  legal  provision  in 
question,  or,  if  he  has,  is  cajoled  or  threatened  into 
"answering  one  or  two  questions"?  Few  police  of- 
ficers take  the  trouble  to  warn  those  whom  they 
arrest  that  what  they  say  may  be  used  against  them. 
What  is  the  use?  Of  course,  when  they  testify  later 
at  the  trial  they  inevitably  begin  their  testimony  with 
the  stereotyped  phrase,  "I  first  warned  the  defendant 
that  anything  which  he  said  would  be  used  against 
him."  If  they  did  warn  him  they  probably  whispered 
it  or  mumbled  it  so  that  he  didn't  hear  what  they 


20    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

said,  or,  in  any  event,  whether  they  said  it  or  not, 
half  a  dozen  of  them  probably  took  him  into  a  back 
room  and,  having  set  him  with  his  back  against  the 
wall,  threatened  and  swore  at  him  until  he  told  them 
what  he  knew,  or  thought  he  knew,  and  perhaps  con- 
fessed his  crime.  When  the  case  comes  to  trial  the 
police  give  the  impression  that  the  accused  quietly 
summoned  them  to  his  cell  to  make  a  voluntary 
statement.  The  defendant  denies  this,  of  course,  but 
the  evidence  goes  in  and  the  harm  has  been  done. 
No  doubt  the  methods  of  the  inquisition  are  in  vogue 
the  world  over  under  similar  conditions.  Everybody 
knows  that  a  statement  by  the  accused  immediately 
upon  his  arrest  is  usually  the  most  important  evi- 
dence that  can  be  secured  in  any  case.  It  is  a  police 
officer's  duty  to  secure  one  if  he  can  do  so  by  legiti- 
mate means.  It  is  his  custom  to  secure  one  by  any 
means  hi  his  power.  As  his  oath,  that  such  a  state- 
ment was  voluntary,  makes  it  ipso  facto  admissible 
as  evidence,  the  statutes  providing  that  a  defendant 
cannot  be  compelled  to  give  evidence  against  himself 
are  practically  nullified. 

The  beneficent  provisions  to  be  found  in  most 
codes  of  criminal  procedure,  and  particularly  in  that 
of  the  State  of  New  York,  while  highly  valuable  under 
some  circumstances,  are  of  no  avail  to  a  defendant 
who  has  never  heard  of  them.  These  are  to  the  effect 
that  the  police  must  convey  a  message  free  of  charge 
to  the  family  or  lawyer  of  every  person  arrested,  that 
each  prisoner  is  entitled  as  matter  of  law  to  a  reason- 
able delay  before  being  compelled  to  submit  to  a 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    21 

hearing,  that  he  has  the  right  to  the  services  of  coun- 
sel, and  the  further  right  to  have  a  stenographic  re- 
port of  the  evidence  taken  before  the  magistrate. 
The  ordinary  petty  criminal  is  arrested  without  a 
warrant,  often  illegally,  hustled  to  the  nearest  police 
court,  put  through  a  species  of  examination  com- 
posed largely  of  invective  and  assertion  on  the  part 
of  the  officer,  found  guilty,  and  "sent  away"  to  the 
Island,  without  lawyer,  adjournment,  or  notice  to 
his  family.  "Off  with  his  head!"— just  like  that! 
He  isn't  presumed  to  be  innocent  at  all.  The  "cop" 
tells  him  J' to  shut  his  mouth  or  he  will  knock  his 
block  off."  "I  caught  this  feller  doin'  so  and  so! 
He's  a  lazy  loafer,  judge,"  he  says  to  the  magistrate. 
The  latter  takes  a  look  at  the  defendant,  concludes 
that  the  officer  is  right,  and  off  goes  the  prisoner  to 
the  workhouse. 

When  it  comes  to  the  more  important  cases  the 
accused  is  usually  put  through  some  sort  of  an  inquisi- 
torial process  by  the  captain  at  the  station-house. 
If  he  is  not  very  successful  at  getting  anything  out  of 
the  prisoner  the  latter  is  turned  over  to  the  sergeant 
and  a  couple  of  officers  who  can  use  methods  of  a 
more  urgent  character.  If  the  prisoner  is  arrested  by 
head-quarters  detectives,  various  efficient  devices  to 
compel  him  to  "give  up  what  he  knows"  may  be 
used — such  as  depriving  him  of  food  and  sleep,  plac- 
ing him  in  a  cell  with  a  "stool-pigeon"  who  will  try 
to  worm  a  confession  out  of  him,  and  the  usual  moral 
suasion  of  a  heart-to-heart  (!)  talk  in  the  back  room 
with  the  inspector. 


22    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

This  is  the  darker  side  of  the  picture  of  practical 
government.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  police  do 
not  usually  suggest  the  various  safeguards  and  privi- 
leges which  the  law  accords  to  defendants  thus  ar- 
rested, but  the  writer  is  free  to  confess  that,  save  in 
exceptional  cases,  he  believes  the  rigors  of  the  so- 
called  third  degree  to  be  greatly  exaggerated.  Fre- 
quently in  dealing  with  rough  men  rough  methods 
are  used,  but  considering  the  multitude  of  offenders, 
and  the  thousands  of  police  officers,  none  of  whom 
have  been  trained  in  a  school  of  gentleness,  it  is  sur- 
prising that  severer  treatment  is  not  met  with  on  the 
part  of  those  who  run  foul  of  the  criminal  law.  The 
ordinary  "cop"  tries  to  do  his  duty  as  effectively  as 
he  can.  With  the  average  citizen  gruffness  and  rough- 
ness go  a  long  way  in  the  assertion  of  authority. 
Policemen  cannot  have  the  manners  of  dancing- 
masters.  The  writer  is  not  quarrelling  with  the  con- 
duct of  police  officers.  On  the  contrary,  the  point  he 
is  trying  to  make  is  that  in  the  task  of  policing  a  big 
city,  the  rights  of  the  individual  must  indubitably 
suffer  to  a  certain  extent  if  the  rights  of  the  multitude 
are  to  be  properly  protected.  We  can  make  too  much 
of  small  injustices  and  petty  incivilities.  Police  busi- 
ness is  not  gentle  business.  The  officers  are  trying 
to  prevent  you  and  me  from  being  knocked  on  the 
head  some  dark  night  or  from  being  chloroformed  in 
our  beds.  Ten  thousand  men  are  trying  to  do  a 
thirty-thousand-man  job. 

The  struggle  to  keep  the  peace  and  put  down  crime 
is  a  hard  one  anywhere.  It  requires  a  strong  arm 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    23 

that  cannot  show  too  punctilious  a  regard  for  theo- 
retical rights  when  prompt  decisions  have  to  be  made 
and  equally  prompt  action  taken.  The  thieves  and 
gun  men  have  got  to  be  driven  out.  Suspicious  char- 
acters have  got  to  be  locked  up.  Somehow  or  other 
a  record  must  be  kept  of  professional  criminals  and 
persons  likely  to  be  active  in  law-breaking.  These 
are  necessities  in  every  civilized  country.  They  are 
necessities  here.  Society  employs  the  same  methods 
of  self -protection  the  world  over.  No  one  presumes 
a  person  charged  with  crime  to  be  innocent,  either  in 
Delhi,  Pekin,  Moscow,  or  New  York.  Under  proper 
circumstances  we  believe  him  guilty.  When  he  comes 
to  be  tried  the  jury-consider  the  evidence,  and  if  they 
are  pretty  sure  he  is  guilty  they  convict  him.  The 
doctrine  of  reasonable  doubt  is  almost  as  much  of  a 
fiction  as  that  of  the  presumption  of  innocence. 
From  the  time  a  man  is  arrested  until  arraignment  he 
is  quizzed  and  interrogated  with  a  view  to  inducing 
him  to  admit  his  offence  or  give  some  evidence  that 
may  help  convict  him.  Logically,  why  should  not  a 
person  charged  with  a  crime  be  obliged  to  give  what 
explanation  he  can  of  the  affair?  Why  should  he  have 
the  privilegeof  silence?  Doesn't  he  owe  a  dutyto  the 
public  the  same  as  any  other  witness?  If  he  is  inno- 
cent he  has  nothing  to  fear;  if  he  is  guilty — away  with 
him!  The  French  have  no  false  ideas  about  such 
things  and  at  the  same  time  they  have  a  high  regard 
for  liberty.  They  merely  recognize  the  fact  that  there 
is  a  point  at  which  the  interest  of  the  public  and  its 
liberty  is  bound  to  conflict  with  the  interest  of  the 


24    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

individual  and  his  freedom  to  do  as  he  likes.  And  we 
instinctively  recognize  this,  too,  just  as  everybody 
does.  We  merely  cheat  ourselves  into  thinking  that 
our  liberty  is  something  different  from  French  liberty 
because  we  have  a  lot  of  laws  upon  our  statute  books 
that  are  there  only  to  be  disregarded  and  would  have 
to  be  repealed  instantly  if  enforced. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  celebrated  provision  of  the 
penal  laws  that  the  failure  of  an  accused,  to  testify 
in  his  own  behalf  shall  not  be  taken  against  him. 
Such  a  doctrine  flies  in  the  face  of  human  nature.  If 
a  man  sits  silent  when  witnesses  under  oath  accuse 
him  of  a  crime  it  is  an  inevitable  inference  that  he 
has  nothing  to  say — that  no  explanation  of  his  would 
explain.  The  records  show  that  the  vast  majority 
of  accused  persons  who  do  not  avail  themselves  of  the 
opportunity  to  testify  are  convicted.  Thus,  the  law 
which  permits  a  defendant  to  testify  in  reality  com- 
pels him  to  testify,  and  a  much-invoked  doctrine  of 
liberty  turns  out  to  be  a  privilege  in  name  only.  In 
France  or  America  alike  a  man  accused  of  crime 
sooner  or  later  has  to  tell  what  he  knows — or  take  his 
medicine.  It  makes  little  difference  whether  he  does 
so  under  the  legalized  examination  of  a  "juge  d'in- 
struction"  in  Paris  or  under  the  quasi-voluntary  in- 
terrogations of  an  assistant  district  attorney  or  police 
inspector  in  New  York.  It  is  six  of  one  and  half  a 
dozen  of  the  other  if  at  his  trial  in  France  he  remains 
mute  under  examination  or  in  America  refrains  from 
availing  himself  of  the  privilege  of  testifying  in  his 
own  behalf. 


THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE    25 

Thus,  we  are  reluctantly  forced  to  the  conclusion 
that  all  human  institutions  have  their  limitations, 
and  that,  however  theoretically  perfect  a  government 
of  laws  may  be,  it  must  be  administered  by  men 
whose  chief  regard  will  not  be  the  idealization  of  a 
theory  of  liberty  so  much  as  an  immediate  solution 
of  some  concrete  problem.  And,  of  course,  we  have 
known  this  all  along,  but  instead  of  doing  away  with 
impossible  laws  we  have  preferred  to  have  prohibi- 
tion on  Main  Street  and  free  liquor  at  the  hotel  side 
doors,  closed  Sundays  on  the  statute  books  and  a 
wide-open  town  in  practice,  immunity  from  arrest 
in  theory  under  cover  of  the  agreeable  delusion  that 
America  is  the  freest  country  in  the  world,  and  in 
reality  the  same  situation  that  exists  in  continental 
countries. 

Not  that  the  matter,  after  all,  is  particularly  im- 
portant to  most  of  us,  but  laws  which  exist  only  to 
be  broken  create  a  disrespect  and  disregard  for  law 
which  may  ultimately  be  dangerous.  It  would  be 
perfectly  simple  for  the  legislature  to  say  that  a  citi- 
zen might  be  arrested  under  circumstances  tending  to 
cause  a  reasonable  suspicion,  even  if  he  had  not  com- 
mitted a  crime,  and  it  would  be  quite  easy  to  pass  a 
statute  providing  that  the  commissioner  of  police 
might  "mug"  and  measure  all  criminals  immediately 
after  conviction.  As  it  is,  the  prison  authorities 
won't  let  him,  so  he  has  to  do  it  while  he  has  the 
opportunity. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  this  is  rather  hard 
on  the  innocent,  but  they  now  have  to  suffer  with 


26    THE  PRESUMPTION  OF  INNOCENCE 

the  guilty  for  the  sins  of  an  indolent  and  unin- 
terested legislature.  Moreover,  if  such  a  right  of 
arrest  were  proposed,  some  wiseacre  or  politician 
would  probably  rise  up  and  denounce  the  suggestion 
as  the  first  step  in  the  direction  of  a  military  dictator- 
ship. Thus,  we  shall  undoubtedly  fare  happily  on 
in  the  blissful  belief  that  our  personal  liberties  are  the 
subject  of  the  most  solicitous  and  zealous  care  on 
the  part  of  the  authorities,  guaranteed  to  us  under  a 
government  which  is  not  of  men  but  of  laws,  until 
one  of  us  happens  to  be  arrested  (by  mistake,  of 
course)  and  learns  by  sad  experience  the  practical 
methods  of  the  police  in  dealing  with  criminals  and 
the  agreeable  but  deceptive  character  of  the  pleasant 
fiction  of  the  presumption  of  innocence. 


CHAPTER  II 
PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE  FOR  TRIAL 

WHEN  the  prosecuting  attorney  in  a  great  criminal 
trial  arises  to  open  the  case  to  the  impanelled  jury, 
very  few,  if  any,  of  them  have  the  slightest  concep- 
tion of  the  enormous  expenditure  of  time,  thought, 
and  labor  which  has  gone  into  the  preparation  of  the 
case  and  made  possible  his  brief  and  easily  delivered 
speech.  For  in  this  opening  address  of  his  there  must 
be  no  flaw,  since  a  single  misstated  or  overstated 
fact  may  prejudice  the  jury  against  him  and  result 
in  his  defeat.  Upon  it  also  depends  the  jury's  first 
impression  of  the  case  and  of  the  prosecutor  himself 
— no  inconsiderable  factor  in  the  result — and  in  a 
trial  of  importance  its  careful  construction  with  due 
regard  to  what  facts  shall  be  omitted  (in  order  to  en- 
hance their  dramatic  effect  when  ultimately  proven) 
may  well  occupy  the  district  attorney  every  evening 
for  a  week.  But  if  the  speech  itself  has  involved  study 
and  travail,  it  is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  amount 
required  by  that  most  important  feature  of  every 
criminal  case — the  selection  of  the  jury. 

For  a  month  before  the  trial,  or  whenever  it  may 
be  that  the  jury  has  been  drawn,  every  member  upon 
the  panel  has  been  subjected  to  an  unseen  inquisi- 
torial process.  The  prosecutor,  through  his  own  or 

27 


28        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

through  hired  sleuths,  has  studied  with  microscopic 
care  the  family  history,  the  business  standing  and 
methods,  the  financial  responsibility,  the  political 
and  social  Affiliations,  and  the  personal  habits  and 
"past  performances"  of  each  and  every  talesman. 
When  at  the  beginning  of  the  trial  they,  one  by  one, 
take  the  witness-chair  (on  what  is  called  the  voir 
dire)  to  subject  themselves  to  an  examination  by 
both  sides  as  to  their  fitness  to  serve  as  jurors  in  the 
case,  the  district  attorney  probably  has  close  at  hand 
a  rather  detailed  account  of  each,  and  perchance  has 
great  difficulty  in  restraining  a  smile  when  some  pro- 
spective juror,  in  his  eagerness  either  to  serve  or  to 
escape,  deliberately  equivocates  in  answer  to  an  im- 
portant question  as  to  his  personal  history. 

"Are  you  acquainted  with  the  accused  or  his  fam- 
ily?" mildly  inquires  the  assistant  prosecutor. 

"No — not  at  all,"  the  talesman  may  blandly  reply. 

The  answer,  perhaps,  is  literally  true,  and  yet  the 
prosecutor  may  be  pardoned  for  murmuring  "Liar!" 
to  himself  as  he  sees  that  his  memorandum  concern- 
ing the  juror's  qualifications  states  that  he  belongs 
to  the  same  "lodge"  with  the  prisoner's  uncle  by 
marriage  and  carries  an  open  account  on  his  books 
with  the  defendant's  father. 

"I  think  we  will  excuse  Mr.  Ananias,"  politely 
remarks  the  prosecutor;  then  hi  an  undertone  he 
turns  to  his  chief  and  mutters:  "The  old  rascal!  He 
would  have  knifed  us  into  a  thousand  pieces  if  we'd 
given  him  the  chance!"  And  all  this  time  the  dis- 
gruntled Mr.  Ananias  is  wondering  why,  if  he  didn't 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE        29 

"know  the  defendant  or  his  family/'  he  was  not  ac- 
cepted as  a  juror. 

Of  course,  every  district  attorney  has,  or  should 
have,  pretty  good  information  as  to  each  talesman's 
actual  capabilities  as  a  juror  and  something  of  a 
record  as  to  how  he  has  acted  under  fire.  If  he  is  a 
member  of  the  "special"  panel,  it  is  easy  to  find  out 
whether  he  has  ever  acquitted  or  convicted  in  any 
cause  celebre,  and  if  he  has  acquitted  any  plainly  guilty 
defendant  in  the  past  it  is  not  likely  that  his  services 
will  be  required.  If,  however,  he  has  convicted  in 
such  a  case  the  district  attorney  may  try  to  lure  the 
other  side  into  accepting  him  by  making  it  appear 
that  he  himself  is  doubtful  as  to  the  juror's  desir- 
ability. Sometimes  persons  accused  of  crime  them- 
selves, and  actually  under  indictment,  find  their  way 
onto  the  panels,  and  more  than  one  ex-convict  has 
appeared  there  in  some  inexplicable  fashion.  But  to 
find  them  out  may  well  require  a  double  shift  of  men 
working  day  and  night  for  a  month  before  the  case 
is  called,  and  what  may  appear  to  be  the  most  trivial 
fact  thus  discovered  may  in  the  end  prove  the  decisive 
argument  for  or  against  accepting  the  juror. 

Panel  after  panel  may  be  exhausted  before  a  jury 
in  a  great  murder  trial  has  been  selected,  for  each 
side  in  addition  to  its  challenges  for  "  cause  "  or  "  bias  " 
has  thirty*  peremptory  ones  which  it  may  exercise 
arbitrarily.  If  the  writer's  recollection  is  not  at  fault, 
the  large  original  panel  drawn  in  the  first  Molineux 
trial  was  used  up  and  several  others  had  to  be  drawn 
*In  the  State  of  New  York. 


30        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

until  eight  hundred  talesmen  had  been  interrogated 
before  the  jury  was  finally  selected.  It  is  usual  to 
examine  at  least  fifty  in  the  ordinary  murder  case 
before  a  jury  is  secured. 

It  may  seem  to  the  reader  that  this  scrutiny  of 
talesmen  is  not  strictly  preparation  for  the  trial,  but, 
in  fact,  it  is  fully  as  important  as  getting  ready  the 
facts  themselves;  for  a  poor  jury,  either  from  igno- 
rance or  prejudice,  will  acquit  on  the  same  facts  which 
will  lead  a  sound  jury  to  convict.  A  famous  prose- 
cutor used  to  say,  "Get  your  jury — the  case  will  take 
care  of  itself." 

But  as  the  examination  of  the  panel  and  the  open- 
ing address  come  last  in  point  of  chronology  it  will 
be  well  to  begin  at  the  beginning  and  see  what  the 
labors  of  the  prosecutor  are  in  the  initial  stages  of 
preparation.  Let  us  take,  for  example,  some  noto- 
rious case,  where  an  unfortunate  victim  has  died  from 
the  effects  of  a  poisoned  pill  or  draft  of  medicine,  or 
has  been  found  dead  in  his  room  with  a  revolver  bul- 
let in  his  heart.  Some  time  before  the  matter  has 
come  into  the  hands  of  the  prosecutor,  the  press  and 
the  police  have  generally  been  doing  more  or  less 
(usually  less)  effective  work  upon  the  case.  The  yel- 
low journals  have  evolved  some  theory  of  who  is  the 
culprit  and  have  loosed  their  respective  reporters 
and  "special  criminologists"  upon  him.  Each  has 
its  own  idea  and  its  own  methods — often  unscru- 
pulous. And  each  has  its  own  particular  victim  upon 
whom  it  intends  to  fasten  the  blame.  Heaven  save 
his  reputation!  Many  an  innocent  man  has  been 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE        31 

ruined  for  life  through  the  efforts  of  a  newspaper 
"to  make  a  case,"  and,  of  course,  the  same  thing, 
though  happily  in  a  lesser  degree,  is  true  of  the  police 
and  of  some  prosecutors  as  well. 

In  every  great  criminal  case  there  are  always  four 
different  and  frequently  antagonistic  elements  en- 
gaged in  the  work  of  detection  and  prosecution — 
first,  the  police;  second,  the  district  attorney;  third, 
the  press;  and,  lastly,  the  personal  friends  and  family 
of  the  deceased  or  injured  party.  Each  for  its  own 
ends — be  it  professional  pride,  personal  glorification, 
hard  cash,  or  revenge — is  equally  anxious  to  find  the 
evidence  and  establish  a  case.  Of  course,  the  police 
are  the  first  ones  notified  of  the  commission  of  a  crime, 
but  as  it  is  now  almost  universally  their  duty  to  in- 
form at  once  the  coroner  and  also  the  district  attor- 
ney thereof,  a  tripartite  race  for  glory  frequently 
results  which  adds  nothing  to  the  dignity  of  the  ad- 
ministration of  criminal  justice. 

The  coroner  is  at  best  no  more  than  an  appendix 
to  the  legal  anatomy,  and  frequently  he  is  a  disease. 
The  spectacle  of  a  medical  man  of  small  learning  and 
less  English  trying  to  preside  over  a  court  of  first 
instance  is  enough  to  make  the  accused  himself 
chuckle  for  joy. 

Not  long  ago  the  coroners  of  New  York  discovered 
that,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  district  attorney  or 
his  representatives  generally  arrived  first  at  the  scene 
of  any  crime,  there  was  nothing  left  for  the  "medi- 
cos" to  do,  for  the  district  attorney  would  thereupon 
submit  the  matter  at  once  to  the  grand  jury  instead 


32        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

of  going  through  the  formality  of  a  hearing  in  the 
coroner's  court.  The  legal  medicine  men  felt  ag- 
grieved, and  determined  to  be  such  early  birds  that 
no  worm  should  them  escape.  Accordingly,  the  next 
time  one  of  them  was  notified  of  a  homicide  he  raced 
his  horse  down  Madison  Avenue  at  such  speed  that 
he  collided  with  a  trolley  car  and  broke  his  leg. 

Another  complained  to  the  district  attorney  that 
the  assistants  of  the  latter,  who  had  arrived  at  the 
scene  of  an  asphyxiation  before  him,  had  bungled 
everything. 

"Ach,  dose  young  men!"  he  exclaimed,  wringing 
his  hands — "Dose  young  men,  dey  come  here  und 
dey  opened  der  vindow  und  let  out  der  gas  und  all 
mine  evidence  esgaped" 

The  same  coroner  on  another  occasion  discovered 
that  a  murderer  had  removed  the  body  of  his  victim 
to  New  Jersey,  thus  depriving  him  of  any  corpse  upon 
which  to  hold  his  inquest.  A  sympathetic  reporter 
thereupon  suggested  that  it  would  be  well  to  have  a 
law  prohibiting  any  such  removal  by  the  party  com- 
mitting a  homicide. 

"Dot  vas  a  good  idea!"  solemnly  replied  the 
medical  Solon.  "It  should  be  made  a  crime!  I  will 
haf  it  proposed  at  der  next  legislature."  L 

It  is  said  that  this  interesting  personage  once  in- 
structed his  jury  to  find  that  "the  diseased  came  to 
his  death  from  an  ulster  on  the  stomach." 
•  These  anecdotes  are,  perhaps,  what  judges  would 
call  obiter  dicta,  yet  the  coroner's  court  has  more  than 
once  been  utilized  as  a  field  in  the  actual  preparation 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE        33 

of  a  criminal  case.  When  Roland  B.  Molineux  was 
first  suspected  of  having  caused  the  death  of  Mrs. 
Adams  by  sending  the  famous  poisoned  package  of 
patent  medicine  to  Harry  Cornish  through  the  mails, 
the  assistant  district  attorney  summoned  him  as  a 
witness  to  the  coroner's  court  and  attempted  to  get 
from  him  in  this  way  a  statement  which  Molineux 
would  otherwise  have  refused  to  make. 

When  all  the  first  hullabaloo  is  over  and  the  accused 
is  under  arrest  and  safely  locked  up,  it  is  usually 
found  that  the  police  have  merely  run  down  the  ob- 
vious witnesses  and  made  a  prima  fade  case.  All 
the  finer  work  remains  to  be  done  either  by  the  dis- 
trict attorney  himself  or  by  the  detective  bureau 
working  under  his  immediate  direction  or  in  har- 
mony with  him.  Little  order  has  been  observed  in 
the  securing  of  evidence.  Every  one  is  a  fish  who  runs 
into  the  net  of  the  police,  and  all  is  grist  that  comes 
to  their  mill.  The  district  attorney  sends  for  the 
officers  who  have  worked  upon  the  case  and  for  the 
captain  or  inspector  who  has  directed  their  efforts, 
takes  all  the  papers  and  tabulates  all  their  informa- 
tion. His  practiced  eye  shows  him  at  once  that  a 
large  part  is  valueless,  much  is  contradictory,  and 
all  needs  careful  elaboration.  A  winnowing'process 
occurs  then  and  there;  and  the  officers  probably 
receive  a  "special  detail"  from  headquarters  and 
thereafter  take  their  orders  from  the  prosecutor  him- 
self. The  detective  bureau  is  called  in  and  arrange- 
ments made  for  the  running  down  of  particular  clews. 
Then  he  will  take  off  his  coat,  clear  his  desk,  and  get 
down  to  work. 


34        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

Of  course,  his  first  step  is  to  get  all  the  information 
he  can  as  to  the  actual  facts  surrounding  the  crime 
itself.  He  immediately  subpoenas  all  the  witnesses, 
whether  previously  interrogated  by  the  police  or  not, 
who  know  anything  about  the  matter,  and  subjects 
them  to  a  rigorous  cross-examination.  Then  he  sends 
for  the  police  themselves  and  cross-examines  them. 
If  it  appears  that  any  witnesses  have  disappeared 
he  instructs  his  detectives  how  and  where  to  look 
for  them.  Often  this  becomes  in  the  end  the  most 
important  element  in  the  preparation  for  the  trial. 
Thus  in  the  Nan  Patterson  case  the  search  for  and 
ultimate  discovery  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Morgan  Smith 
(the  sister  and  brother-in-law  of  the  accused)  was 
one  of  its  most  dramatic  features.  After  they  had 
been  found  it  was  necessary  to  indict  and  then  to 
extradite  them  in  order  to  secure  their  presence 
within  the  jurisdiction,  and  when  all  this  had  been 
accomplished  it  proved  practically  valueless. 

It  frequently  happens  that  an  entire  case  will  rest 
upon  the  testimony  of  a  single  witness  whose  absence 
from  the  jurisdiction  would  prevent  the  trial.  An 
instance  of  such  a  case  was  that  of  Albert  T.  Patrick, 
for  without  the  testimony  of  his  alleged  accomplice 
— the  valet  Jones — he  could  not  have  been  convicted 
of  murder.  The  preservation  of  such  a  witness  and  his 
testimony  thus  becomes  of  paramount  importance, 
and  rascally  witnesses  sometimes  enjoy  considerable 
ease,  if  not  luxury,  at  the  expense  of  the  public  while 
waiting  to  testify.  Often,  too,  a  case  of  great  interest 
will  arise  where  the  question  of  the  guilt  of  the  accused 
turns  upon  the  evidence  of  some  one  person  who, 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE       35 

either  from  mercenary  motives  or  because  of  "blood 
and  affection,"  is  unwilling  to  come  to  the  fore  and 
tell  the  truth.  A  striking  case  of  this  sort  occurred 
some  ten  years  ago.  The  "black  sheep"  of  a  promi- 
nent New  York  family  forged  the  name  of  his  sister 
to  a  draft  for  thirty  thousand  dollars.  This  sister, 
who  was  an  elderly  woman  of  the  highest  character 
and  refinement,  did  not  care  to  pocket  the  loss  her- 
self and  declined  to  have  the  draft  debited  to  her 
account  at  the  bank.  A  lawsuit  followed,  in  which 
the  sister  swore  that  the  name  signed  to  the  draft 
was  not  in  her  handwriting.  She  won  her  case,  but 
some  disinterested  though  officious  person  laid  the 
matter  before  the  district  attorney.  The  forger  was 
arrested  and  his  sister  was  summoned  before  the 
grand  jury.  Here  was  a  pleasant  predicament.  If 
she  testified  for  the  State  her  brother  would  undoubt- 
edly go  to  prison  for  many  years,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  notoriety  for  the  entire  family  which  so  sensa- 
tional a  case  would  occasion.  She,  therefore,  slipped 
out  of  the  city  and  sailed  for  Europe  the  night  before 
she  was  to  appear  before  the  grand  jury.  Her  brother 
was  in  due  course  indicted  and  held  for  trial  in  large 
bail,  but  there  was  and  is  no  prospect  of  convicting 
him  for  his  crime  so  long  as  his  sister  remains  in  the 
voluntary  exile  to  which  she  has  subjected  herself. 
She  can  never  return  to  New  York  to  live  unless 
something  happens  either  to  the  indictment  or  her 
brother,  neither  of  which  events  seems  likely  in  the 
immediate  future. 
Perhaps,  if  the  case  is  one  of  shooting,  the  weapon 


36        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

has  vanished.  Its  discovery  may  lead  to  the  finding 
of  the  murderer.  In  one  instance  where  a  body  was 
found  in  the  woods  with  a  bullet  through  the  heart 
there  was  nothing  to  indicate  who  had  committed 
the  crime.  The  only  scintilla  of  evidence  was  an 
exploded  cartridge — a  small  thing  on  which  to  build 
a  case.  But  the  district  attorney  had  the  hammer 
marks  upon  the  cap  magnified  several  hundred  times 
and  then  set  out  to  find  the  rifle  which  bore  the  ham- 
mer which  had  made  them.  Thousands  of  rifles  all 
over  the  State  were  examined.  At  last  in  a  remote 
lumber  camp  was  found  the  weapon  which  had  fired 
the  fatal  bullet.  The  owner  was  arrested,  accused 
of  the  murder,  and  confessed  his  crime.  In  like  man- 
ner, if  it  becomes  necessary  to  determine  where  a 
typewritten  document  was  prepared  the  letters  may 
be  magnified,  and  by  examining  the  ribbons  of  sus- 
pected machines  the  desired  fact  may  be  ascertained. 
The  magnifying  glass  still  plays  an  important  part 
in  detecting  crime,  although  usually  in  ways  little 
suspected  by  the  general  public. 

On  the  other  hand,  where  the  weapon  has  not  been 
spirited  away  the  detectives  may  spend  weeks  in 
discovering  when  and  where  it  was  purchased.  Every 
pawnshop,  every  store  where  a  pistol  could  be  bought, 
is  investigated,  and  under  proper  circumstances  the 
requisite  evidence  to  show  deliberation  and  premedi- 
tation may  be  secured. 

These  investigations  are  naturally  conducted  at 
the  very  outset  of  the  preparation  of  the  case.  The 
weapon,  hi  seven  trials  out  of  ten,  is  the  most  im- 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE       37 

portant  thing  in  it.  By  its  means  it  can  generally 
be  demonstrated  whether  the  shooting  was  accidental 
or  intentional — and  whether  or  not  the  killing  was  in 
self-defence. 

Where  this  last  plea  is  interposed  it  is  usually  made 
at  once  upon  the  arrest,  the  accused  explaining  to 
the  police  that  he  fired  only  to  save  his  own  life.  In 
such  a  situation,  where  the  killing  is  admitted,  prac- 
tically the  entire  preparation  will  centre  upon  the 
most  minute  tests  to  determine  whether  or  not  the 
shot  was  fired  as  the  accused  claims  that  it  was.  The 
writer  can  recall  at  least  a  dozen  cases  in  his  own  ex- 
perience where  the  story  of  the  defendant,  that  the 
revolver  was  discharged  in  a  hand-to-hand  struggle, 
was  conclusively  disproved  by  experimenting  with 
the  weapon  before  the  trial.  There  was  one  homi- 
cide in  which  a  bullet  perforated  a  felt  cap  and  pene- 
trated the  forehead  of  the  deceased.  The  defendant 
asserted  that  he  was  within  three  feet  of  his  victim 
when  he  fired,  and  that  the  other  was  about  to  strike 
him  with  a  bludgeon.  A  quantity  of  felt,  of  weight 
similar  to  that  of  the  cap,  was  procured  and  the  re- 
volver discharged  at  it  from  varying  distances.  A 
microscopic  examination  showed  that  certain  dis- 
colorations  around  the  bullet-hole  (claimed  by  the  de- 
fence to  be  burns  made  by  the  powder)  were,  in  fact, 
grease  marks  and  that  the  shot  must  have  been  fired 
from  a  distance  of  about  fifteen  feet.  The  defendant 
was  convicted  on  his  own  story,  supplemented  by 
the  evidence  of  the  witness  who  made  the  tests. 

The  most  obvious  and  first  requirement  is,  as  has 
been  said,  to  find  the  direct  witnesses  to  the  facts 


38        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

surrounding  the  crime,  commit  their  statements  under 
oath  to  writing,  so  that  they  cannot  later  be  denied 
or  evaded,  and  make  sure  that  these  witnesses  will  not 
only  hold  no  intercourse  with  the  other  side,  but  will 
be  on  hand  when  wanted.  This  last  is  not  always  an 
easy  task,  and  various  expedients  often  have  to  be 
resorted  to,  such  as  placing  hostile  witnesses  under 
police  surveillance,  or  in  some  cases  in  "houses  of 
detention,"  and  hiding  others  in  out-of-the-way 
places,  or  supplying  them  with  a  bodyguard  if  vio- 
lence is  to  be  anticipated.  When  the  proper  time 
comes  the  favorable  witnesses  must  be  duly  drilled 
or  coached,  which  does  not  imply  anything  im- 
proper, but  means  merely  that  they  must  be  in- 
structed how  to  deliver  their  testimony,  what  an- 
swers are  expected  to  certain  questions,  and  what 
facts  it  is  intended  to  elicit  from  them.  Wit- 
nesses are  often  offended  and  run  amuck  because 
they  are  not  given  a  chance  upon  the  stand  to 
tell  the  story  of  their  lives.  This  must  be  guarded 
against  and  steps  taken  to  have  their  statements 
given  in  such  a  way  that  they  are  audible  and  in- 
telligible. A  few  lessons  in  elementary  elocution  are 
generally  vitally  necessary.  The  man  with  the  bas- 
soon voice  must  be  tamed,  and  the  birdlike  old  lady 
made  to  chirp  more  loudly.  But  all  this  is  the  self- 
evident  preparation  which  must  take  place  in  every 
case,  and  while  highly  important  is  of  far  less  in- 
terest than  the  development  of  the  circumstantial 
evidence  which  is  the  next  consideration  of  the  dis- 
trict attorney. 
The  discovery  and  proper  proof  of  minute  facts 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE        39 

which  tend  to  demonstrate  the  guilt  of  an  accused 
are  the  joy  of  the  natural  prosecutor,  and  he  may  in 
his  enthusiasm  spend  many  thousands  of  dollars  on 
what  seems,  and  often  is,  an  immaterial  matter. 
Youthful  officials  intrusted  with  the  preparation  of 
important  cases  often  become  unduly  excited  and 
forget  that  the  taxpayers  are  paying  the  bills.  The 
writer  remembers  sitting  beside  one  of  these  en- 
thusiasts during  a  celebrated  trial.  A  certain  woman 
witness  had  incidentally  testified  to  a  remote  meeting 
with  the  deceased  at  which  a  certain  other  woman 
was  alleged  to  have  been  present.  The  matter  did 
not  seem  of  much  interest  or  importance,  but  the 
youth  in  question  seized  a  yellow  pad  and  excitedly 
wrote  in  blue  pencil,  "Find  Birdie"  (the  other  lady) 
"at  any  cost!19  This  he  handed  to  a  detective,  who 
hastened  importantly  away.  Let  us  hope  that  "  Bir- 
die "was  found  speedily  and  in  an  inexpensive  manner. 

When  the  case  against  Albert  T.  Patrick,  later 
convicted  of  the  murder  of  the  aged  William  M. 
Rice,  was  in  course  of  preparation  it  was  found 
desirable  to  show  that  Patrick  had  called  up  his 
accomplice  on  the  telephone  upon  the  night  of  the 
murder.  Accordingly,  the  telephone  company  was 
compelled  to  examine  several  hundred  thousand 
telephone  slips  to  determine  whether  or  not  this 
had  actually  occurred.  While  the  fact  was  es- 
tablished in  the  affirmative,  the  company  now  des- 
troys its  slips  in  order  not  to  have  to  repeat  the 
performance  a  second  time. 

Likewise,  in  the  preparation  of  the  Molineux  case 


40        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

it  became  important  to  demonstrate  that  the  accused 
had  sent  a  letter  under  an  assumed  name  ordering 
certain  remedies.  As  a  result,  one  of  the  employees 
of  the  patent-medicine  company  spent  several 
months  going  over  their  old  mail  orders  and  com- 
paring them  with  a  certain  sample,  until  at  last  the 
letter  was  unearthed.  Of  course,  the  district  at- 
torney had  to  pay  for  it,  and  it  was  probably  worth 
what  it  cost  to  the  prosecution,  although  Molineux's 
conviction  was  reversed  by  the  Court  of  Appeals 
and  he  was  acquitted  upon  his  second  trial. 

The  danger  is,  however,  that  a  prosecutor  who  has 
an  unlimited  amount  of  money  at  his  disposal  may 
be  led  into  expenditures  which  are  hardly  justified 
simply  because  he  thinks  they  may  help  to  secure  a 
conviction.  Nothing  is  easier  than  to  waste  money 
in  this  fashion,  and  public  officials  sometimes  spend 
the  county's  money  with  considerably  more  free- 
dom than  they  would  their  own  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances. 

The  legitimate  expenses  connected  with  the  prep- 
aration of  every  important  case  are  naturally  large. 
For  example,  diagrams  must  be  prepared,  photographs 
taken  of  the  place  of  the  crime,  witnesses  compen- 
sated for  their  time  and  their  expenses  paid,  and, 
most  important  of  all,  competent  experts  must  be 
engaged.  This  leads  us  to  an  interesting  aspect  of 
the  modern  jury  trial. 

When  no  other  defence  to  homicide  is  possible  the 
claim  of  insanity  is  frequently  interposed.  Nothing 
is  more  confusing  to  the  ordinary  juryman  than  try- 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE        41 

ing  to  determine  the  probative  value  of  evidence 
touching  unsoundness  of  mind,  and  the  applica- 
tion thereto  of  the  legal  test  of  criminal  responsibil- 
ity. In  point  of  fact,  juries  are  hardly  to  be  blamed 
for  this,  since  the  law  itself  is  antiquated  and  the  sub- 
ject one  abounding  in  difficulty.  Unfortunately  the 
opportunity  for  vague  yet  damaging  testimony  on 
the  part  of  experts,  the  ease  with  which  any  desired 
opinion  can  be  defended  by  a  slight  alteration  in  the 
hypothetical  facts,  and  the  practical  impossibility 
of  exposure,  have  been  seized  upon  with  avidity  by 
a  score  or  more  of  unscrupulous  alienists  who  are 
prepared  to  sell  their  services  to  the  highest  bidder. 
These  men  are  all  the  more  dangerous  because,  clever 
students  of  mental  disease  and  thorough  masters  of 
their  subject  as  they  are,  they  are  able  by  adroit  qual- 
ifications and  skilful  evasions  to  make  half-truths 
seem  as  convincing  as  whole  ones.  They  ask  and  re- 
ceive large  sums  for  their  services,  and  their  dishonest 
testimony  must  be  met  and  refuted  by  the  evidence 
of  honest  physicians,  who,  by  virtue  of  their  attain- 
ments, have  a  right  to  demand  substantial  fees.  Even 
so,  newspaper  reports  of  the  expense  to  the  State  of 
notorious  trials  are  grossly  exaggerated.  The  entire 
cost  of  the  first  Thaw  trial  to  the  County  of  New 
York  was  considerably  less  than  twenty  thousand 
dollars,  and  the  second  trial  not  more  than  half  that 
amount.  To  the  defence,  however,  it  was  a  costly 
matter,  as  the  recent  schedules  in  bankruptcy  of  the 
defendant  show.  Therein  it  appears  that  one  of  his 
half-dozen  counsel  still  claims  as  owing  to  him  for 


42        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

his  services  on  the  first  trial  the  modest  sum  of  thirty- 
five  thousand  dollars!  The  cost  of  the  whole  defence 
was  probably  ten  times  that  sum.  Most  of  the  money 
goes  to  the  lawyers,  and  the  experts  take  the  re- 
mainder. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  both  prosecutor  and 
attorney  for  the  defence  must  be  masters  of  the  sub- 
ject involved.  A  trial  for  poisoning  means  an  ex- 
haustive study  not  only  of  analytic  chemistry,  but  of 
practical  medicine  on  the  part  of  all  the  lawyers  in 
the  case,  while  a  plea  of  insanity  requires  that,  for 
the  time  being,  the  district  attorney  shall  become 
an  alienist,  familiar  with  every  aspect  of  paranoia, 
dementia  prcecox,  and  all  other  forms  of  mania.  He 
must  also  reduce  his  knowledge  to  concrete,  workable 
form,  and  be  able  to  defeat  opposing  experts  on  their 
own  ground.  But  such  knowledge  comes  only  by 
prayer  and  fasting — or,  perhaps,  rather  by  months 
of  hard  and  remorseless  grind. 

The  writer  once  prosecuted  a  druggist  who  had, 
by  mistake,  filled  a  prescription  for  a  one-fourth- 
grain  pill  of  calomel  with  a  one-fourth-grain  pill  of 
morphine.  The  baby  for  whom  the  pill  was  intended 
died  in  consequence.  The  defence  was  that  the  pre- 
scription had  been  properly  filled,  but  that  the  child 
was  the  victim  of  various  diseases,  from  acute  gas- 
tritis to  cerebro-spinal  meningitis.  In  preparation 
the  writer  was  compelled  to  spend  four  hours  every 
evening  for  a  week  with  three  specialists,  and  became 
temporarily  a  minor  expert  on  children's  diseases. 
To-day  he  is  forced  to  admit  that  he  would  not 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE        43 

know  a  case  of  acute  gastritis  from  one  of  mumps. 
But  the  druggist  was  convicted. 

Yet  it  is  not  enough  to  prepare  for  the  defence  you 
believe  the  accused  is  going  to  interpose.  A  con- 
scientious preparation  means  getting  ready  for  any 
defence  he  may  endeavor  to  put  in.  Just  as  the  pru- 
dent general  has  an  eye  to  every  possible  turn  of  the 
battle  and  has,  if  he  can,  re-enforcements  on  the 
march,  so  the  prosecutor  must  be  ready  for  anything, 
and  readiest  of  all  for  the  unexpected.  He  must  not 
rest  upon  the  belief  that  the  other  side  will  concede 
any  fact,  however  clear  it  may  seem.  Some  cases 
are  lost  simply  because  it  never  occurs  to  the  district 
attorney  that  the  accused  will  deny  something  which 
the  State  has  twenty  witnesses  to  prove.  The  twenty 
witnesses  are,  therefore,  not  summoned  on  the  day 
of  trial,  the  defendant  does  deny  it,  and  as  it  is  a  case 
of  word  against  word  the  accused  gets  the  benefit 
of  the  doubt  and,  perhaps,  is  acquitted. 

No  case  is  properly  prepared  unless  there  is  in  the 
court-room  every  witness  who  knows  anything  about 
any  aspect  of  the  case.  No  one  can  foretell  when  the 
unimportant  will  become  the  vital.  Most  cases  turn 
on  an  unconsidered  point.  A  prosecutor  once  lost 
what  seemed  to  him  the  clearest  sort  of  a  case.  When 
it  was  all  over,  and  the  defendant  had  passed  out  of 
the  court-room  rejoicing,  he  turned  to  the  foreman 
and  asked  the  reason  for  the  verdict. 

"  Did  you  hear  your  chief  witness  say  he  was  a  car- 
penter?" inquired  the  foreman. 

"Why,  certainly/'  answered  the  district  attorney. 


44       PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

"Did  you  hear  me  ask  him  what  he  paid  for  that 
ready-made  pine  door  he  claimed  to  be  working  on 
when  he  saw  the  assault?" 

The  prosecutor  recalled  the  incident  and  nodded. 

"Well,  he  said  ten  dollars — and  I  knew  he  was  a 
liar.  A  door  like  that  don't  cost  but  four-fifty!" 

It  is,  perhaps,  too  much  to  require  a  knowledge 
of  carpentry  on  the  part  of  a  lawyer  trying  an  assault 
case.  Yet  the  juror  was  undoubtedly  right  in  his 
deduction. 

In  a  case  where  insanity  is  the  defence,  the  State 
must  dig  up  and  have  at  hand  every  person  it  can 
find  who  knew  the  accused  at  any  period  of  his  career. 
He  will  probably  claim  that  in  his  youth  he  was  kicked 
in  a  game  of  foot-ball  and  fractured  his  skull,  that 
later  he  fell  into  an  elevator  shaft  and  had  concussion 
of  the  brain,  or  that  he  was  hit  on  the  head  by  a 
burglar.  It  is  usually  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to 
disprove  such  assertions,  but  the  prosecutor  must  be 
ready,  if  he  can,  to  show  that  foot-ball  was  not  in- 
vented until  after  the  defendant  had  attained  ma- 
turity, that  it  was  some  other  man  who  fell  down  the 
elevator  shaft,  and  to  produce  the  burglar  to  deny 
that  the  assault  occurred.  Naturally,  complete  prep- 
aration for  an  important  trial  demands  the  presence 
of  many  witnesses  who  ultimately  are  not  needed 
and  who  are  never  called.  Probably  in  most  such 
cases  about  half  the  witnesses  do  not  testify  at  all.  » 

Most  of  what  has  been  said  has  related  to  the  prep- 
aration for  trial  of  cases  where  the  accused  is  already 
under  arrest  when  the  district  attorney  is  called  into 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE       45 

the  case.  If  this  stage  has  not  been  reached  the  prose- 
cutor may  well  be  called  upon  to  exercise  some  of  the 
functions  of  a  detective  in  the  first  instance. 

A  few  years  ago  it  was  brought  to  the  attention 
of  the  New  York  authorities  that  many  black- 
mailing letters  were  being  received  bearing  the  name 
of  "Lewis  Jarvis."  These  were  of  a  character  to 
render  the  apprehension  of  the  writer  of  them  a 
matter  of  much  importance.  The  letters  directed 
that  the  replies  be  sent  to  a  certain  box  in  the  New 
York  post-office,  but  as  the  boxes  are  numerous  and 
close  together  it  seemed  doubtful  if  "Lewis  Jarvis" 
could  be  detected  when  he  called  for  his  mail.  The 
district  attorney,  the  police,  and  the  post-office  of- 
ficials finally  evolved  the  scheme  of  plugging  the  lock 
of  "Lewis  Jarvis V  box  with  a  match.  The  scheme 
worked,  for  "Jarvis,"  finding  that  he  could  not  use 
his  key,  went  to  the  delivery  window  and  asked  for 
his  mail.  The  very  instant  the  letters  reached  his 
hand  the  gyves  were  upon  the  wrists  of  one  of  the 
best-known  attorneys  in  the  city. 

When  the  district  attorney  has  been  apprised  that 
a  crime  has  been  committed,  and  that  a  certain  per- 
son is  the  guilty  party,  he  not  infrequently  allows  the 
suspect  to  go  his  way  under  the  careful  watch  of  detec- 
tives, and  thus  often  secures  much  new  evidence 
against  him.  In  this  way  it  is  sometimes  established 
that  the  accused  has  endeavored  to  bribe  the  wit- 
nesses and  to  induce  them  to  leave  the  State,  while 
the  whereabouts  of  stolen  loot  is  often  discovered. 
In  most  instances,  however,  the  district  attorney 


46        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

begins  where  the  police  leave  off,  and  he  merely  sup- 
plements their  labors  and  prepares  for  the  actual 
trial  itself.  But  the  press  he  has  always  with  him, 
and  from  the  first  moment  after  the  crime  up  to  the 
execution  of  the  sentence  or  the  liberation  of  the 
accused,  the  reporters  dog  his  footsteps,  sit  on  his 
doorstep,  and  deluge  him  with  advice  and  informa- 
tion. 

Now  a  curious  feature  about  the  evidence  "worked 
up"  by  reporters  for  their  papers  is  that  little  of 
it  materializes  when  the  prosecutor  wishes  to  make 
use  of  it.  Of  course,  some  reporters  do  excellent 
detective  work,  and  there  are  one  or  two  veterans 
(like  Gus.  Roeder  of  the  World)  attached  to  the 
criminal  courts  in  New  York  City  who,  in  addition 
to  their  literary  capacities,  are  natural-born  sleuths, 
and  combine  with  a  knowledge  of  criminal  law,  al- 
most as  extensive  as  that  of  a  regular  prosecutor,  a 
resourcefulness  and  nerve  that  often  win  the  case 
for  whichever  sic(e  they  espouse.  I  have  frequently 
found  that  these  men  knew  more  about  the  cases 
which  I  was  prosecuting  than  I  did  myself,  and  a 
tip  from  them  has  more  than  once  turned  defeat 
into  victory.  But  newspaper  men,  for  one  reason  or 
another,  are  loath  to  testify,  and  usually  make  but 
poor  witnesses.  They  feel  that  their  motives  will  be 
questioned,  and  are  naturally  unwilling  to  put  them- 
selves in  an  equivocal  position.  The  writer  well 
remembers  that  in  the  Mabel  Parker  case,  where  the 
defendant,  a  young  and  pretty  woman,  had  boasted 
of  her  forgeries  before  a  roomful  of  reporters,  it  was 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE       47 

impossible,  when  her  trial  was  called,  to  find  more 
than  one  of  them  who  would  testify — and  he  had 
practically  to  be  dragged  to  the  witness  chair.  In 
point  of  fact,  if  reporters  made  a  practice  of  being 
witnesses  it  would  probably  hurt  their  business. 
But,  however  much  "faked"  news  may  be  published, 
a  prosecutor  who  did  not  listen  to  all  the  hints  the 
press  boys  had  to  give  would  make  a  great  mistake; 
and  as  allies  and  advisers  they  are  often  invaluable, 
for  they  can  tell  him  where  and  how  to  get  evidence 
of  which  otherwise  he  would  never  hear. 

The  week  before  a  great  case  is  called  is  a  busy  one 
for  the  prosecutor  in  charge.  He  is  at  his  office  early 
to  interview  his  main  witnesses  and  go  over  their  tes- 
timony with  them  so  that  their  regular  daily  work 
may  not  be  interrupted  more  than  shall  be  actually 
necessary.  Some  he  cautions  against  being  over-en- 
thusiastic and  others  he  encourages  to  greater  em- 
phasis. The  bashful  "cop"  is  badgered  until  at  last 
he  ceases  to  begin  his  testimony  in  the  cut-and-dried 
police  fashion. 

"On  the  morning  of  the  twenty-second  of  July, 
about  3.30  A.M.,  while  on  post  at  the  corner  of  Des- 
brossesjStreet , "  he  starts.  , 

"Oh,  quit  that!"  shouts  the  district  attorney. 
"Tell  me  what  you  saw  in  your  own  words." 
i   The  "cop"  blushes  and  stammers: 

"Aw,  well,  on  the  morning  of  the  twenty-second 
of  July,  about  3.30  A.M. " 

"Look  here!"  yells  the  prosecutor,  jumping  to  his 
feet  and  shaking  his  fist  at  him,  "do  you  want  to  be 


48        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

taken  for  a  d — n  liar?  '  Morning  of  the  twenty-sec- 
ond of  July,  about  3.30  A.  M.,  while  on  post!7  You 
never  talked  like  that  in  your  life." 

By  this  time  the  "cop"  is  "mad  clear  through." 

"I'm  no  liar!"  he  retorts.  "I  saw  the  cuss  pull 
his  gun  and  shoot!" 

"Well,  why  didn't  you  say  so?"  laughs  the  prose- 
cutor, and  Patrick,  mollified  with  a  cigar,  dimly  per- 
ceives the  objectionable  feature  of  his  testimony. 

About  this  time  one  of  the  sleuths  comes  in  to  re- 
port that  certain  much-desired  witnesses  have  been 
"  located  "  and  are  in  custody  downstairs.  The  assis- 
tant makes  immediate  preparation  for  taking  their 
statements.  Then  one  of  the  experts  comes  in  for  a 
chat  about  a  new  phase  of  the  case  occasioned  by  the 
discovery  that  the  defendant  actually  did  have  spasms 
when  an  infant.  The  assistant  wisely  makes  an  ap- 
pointment for  the  evening.  A  telegram  arrives  say- 
ing that  a  witness  for  the  defence  has  just  started  for 
New  York  from  Philadelphia  and  should  be  duly 
watched  on  arrival.  The  district  attorney  sends  for 
the  assistant  to  inquire  if  he  has  looked  up  the  law 
on  similar  cases  in  Texas  and  Alabama — which  he 
probably  has  not  done;  and  a  friend  on  the  telephone 
informs  him  that  Tomkins,  who  has  been  drawn 
on  the  jury,  is  a  boon  companion  of  the  prisoner  and 
was  accustomed  to  play  bridge  with  him  every  Sun- 
day night  before  the  murder. 

Coincidently,  some  private  detectives  enter  with 
a  long  report  on  the  various  members  of  the  panel, 
including  the  aforesaid  Tomkins,  whom  they  pro- 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE        49 

nounce  to  be  "all  right,"  and  as  never  having,  to  their 
knowledge,  laid  eyes  on  the  accused.  Finally,  in  de- 
spair, the  prosecutor  locks  himself  in  his  library  with  a 
copy  of  the  Bible,  "Bartlett's  Familiar  Quotations," 
and  a  volume  of  celebrated  speeches,  to  prepare  his 
summing  up,  for  no  careful  trial  lawyer  opens  a  case 
without  first  having  prepared,  to  some  extent,  at 
least,  his  closing  address  to  the  jury.  He  has  thought 
about  this  for  weeks  and  perhaps  for  months.  In  his 
dreams  he  has  formulated  syllogisms  and  delivered 
them  to  imaginary  yet  obstinate  talesmen.  He  has 
glanced  through  many  volumes  for  similes  and  quo- 
tations of  pertinency.  He  has  tried  various  argu- 
ments on  his  friends  until  he  knows  just  how,  if  he 
succeeds  in  proving  certain  facts  and  the  defence  ex- 
pected is  interposed,  he  is  going  to  convince  the  twelve 
jurors  that  the  defendant  is  guilty  and,  perhaps,  win 
an  everlasting  reputation  as  an  orator  himself. 

This  superficial  sketch  of  how  an  important  crim- 
inal case  is  got  ready  for  trial  would  be  incomplete 
without  some  further  reference  to  something  which 
has  been  briefly  hinted  at  before — preparation  upon 
its  purely  legal  aspect.  This  may  well  demand  al- 
most as  much  labor  as  that  required  in  amassing  the 
evidence.  Yet  a  careful  and  painstaking  investiga- 
tion of  the  law  governing  every  aspect  of  the  case 
is  indispensable  to  success.  The  prosecutor  with  a 
perfectly  clear  case  may  see  the  defendant  walk  out 
of  court  a  free  man,  simply  because  he  has  neglected 
to  acquaint  himself  with  the  various  points  of  law 
which  may  arise  in  the  course  of  the  trial,  and  the 


50        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

lawyer  for  an  accused  may  find  his  client  convicted 
upon  a  charge  to  which  he  has  a  perfectly  good  legal 
defence,  for  the  same  reason. 

Looking  at  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  prison- 
er's counsel,  it  is  obvious  that  it  is  quite  as  efficacious 
to  free  your  client  on  a  point  of  law,  without  having 
the  case  go  to  the  jury  at  all,  as  to  secure  an  acquittal 
at  their  hands. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  evidence  introduced  in 
behalf  of  the  State  there  is  always  a  motion  made  to 
dismiss  the  case  on  the  ground  of  alleged  insufficiency 
in  the  proof.  This  has  usually  been  made  the  sub- 
ject of  the  most  exhaustive  study  by  the  lawyers  for 
the  defence,  and  requires  equal  preparation  on  the 
part  of  the  prosecutor.  The  writer  recalls  trying  a 
bankrupt,  charged  with  fraud,  where  the  lawyer  for 
the  defendant  had  written  a  brief  of  some  three  hun- 
dred pages  upon  the  points  of  law  which  he  proposed 
to  argue  to  the  court  upon  his  motion  to  acquit.  But, 
unfortunately,  his  client  pleaded  guilty  and  the  vol- 
ume was  never  brought  into  play. 

But  a  mastery  of  the  law,  a  thorough  knowledge 
and  control  of  the  evidence,  a  careful  preparation  for 
the  opening  and  closing  addresses,  and  an  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  panel  from  which  the  jury  is 
to  be  drawn  are  by  no  means  the  only  elements  in 
the  preparation  for  a  great  legal  battle.  One  thing 
still  remains,  quite  as  important  as  the  rest — the 
selection  of  the  best  time  and  the  best  court  for  the 
trial.  "A  good  beginning"  in  a  criminal  case  means 
a  beginning  before  the  right  judge,  the  proper  jury, 


PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE       51 

and  at  a  time  when  that  vague  but  important  in- 
fluence known  as  public  opinion  augurs  success.  A 
clever  criminal  lawyer,  be  he  prosecutor  or  lawyer  for 
the  defendant,  knows  that  all  the  preparation  in  the 
world  is  of  no  account  provided  his  case  is  to  come 
before  a  stupid  or  biased  judge,  or  a  prejudiced  or 
obstinate  jury.  Therefore,  each  side,  in  a  legal  battle 
of  importance,  studies,  as  well  as  it  can,  the  charac- 
ter, connections,  and  cast  of  mind  of  the  different 
judges  who  may  be  called  upon  to  hear  the  case,  and, 
like  a  jockey  at  the  flag,  tries  to  hurry  or  delay,  as  the 
case  may  be,  until  the  judicial  auspices  appear  most 
favorable.  A  lawyer  who  has  a  weak  defence  seeks 
to  bring  the  case  before  a  weak  judge,  or,  if  public 
clamor  is  loud  against  his  client,  makes  use  of  every 
technical  artifice  to  secure  delay,  by  claiming  that 
there  are  flaws  in  the  indictment,  or  by  moving  for 
commissions  to  take  testimony  in  distant  points  of 
the  country.  The  opportunities  for  legal  procrasti- 
nation are  so  numerous  that  in  a  complicated  case  the 
defence  may  often  delay  matters  for  over  a  year. 
This  may  be  an  important  factor  in  the  final  result. 
Yet  even  this  is  not  enough,  for,  ultimately,  it  is 
the  judge's  charge  to  the  jury  which  is  going  to  guide 
their  deliberations  and,  in  large  measure,  determine 
their  verdict.  The  lawyers  for  the  defence,  therefore, 
prepare  long  statements  of  what  they  either  believe 
or  pretend  to  believe  to  be  the  law.  These  statements 
embrace  all  the  legal  propositions,  good  or  bad,  favor- 
able to  their  side  of  the  case.  If  they  can  induce  the 
judge  to  follow  these  so  much  the  better  for  their 


52        PREPARING  A  CRIMINAL  CASE 

client,  for  even  if  they  are  not  law  it  makes  no  dif- 
ference, since  the  State  has  no  appeal  from  an  ac- 
quittal in  a  criminal  case,  no  matter  how  much  the 
judge  has  erred.  In  the  same  way,  but  not  in  quite 
the  same  fashion,  the  district  attorney  prepares  "  re- 
quests to  charge/'  but  his  desire  for  favorable  in- 
structions should  be,  and  generally  is,  curbed  by  the 
consideration  that  if  the  judge  makes  any  mistake 
in  the  law  and  the  defendant  is  convicted  he  can 
appeal  and  upset  the  case.  Of  course,  some  prose- 
cutors are  so  anxious  to  convict  that  they  will  wheedle 
or  deceive  a  judge  into  giving  charges  which  are  not 
only  most  inimical  to  the  prisoner,  but  so  utterly 
unsound  that  a  reversal  is  sure  to  follow;  but  when 
one  of  these  professional  bloodhounds  is  baying  upon 
the  trail  all  he  thinks  of  is  a  conviction — that  is  all 
he  wants,  all  the  public  will  remember;  to  him  will 
be  the  glory;  and  when  the  case  is  finally  reversed 
he  will  probably  be  out  of  office.  These  "requests" 
cover  pages,  and  touch  upon  every  phase  of  law  ap- 
plicable or  inapplicable  to  the  case.  Frequently  they 
number  as  many  as  fifty,  sometimes  many  more.  It 
is  "up  to"  the  judge  to  decide  "off  the  bat"  which 
are  right  and  which  are  wrong.  If  he  guesses  that 
the  right  one  is  wrong  or  the  wrong  one  right  the 
defendant  gets  a  new  trial. 


CHAPTER  III 
SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS 

FOB  the  past  twenty-five  years  we  have  heard  the 
cry  upon  all  sides  that  the  jury  system  is  a  failure. 
Indeed,  such  to-day  is  prevalently  believed  to  be  the 
case;  and  to  this  general  indictment  is  frequently 
added  the  specification  that  the  trials  in  our  higher 
courts  of  criminal  justice  are  the  scenes  of  grotesque 
buffoonery  and  heartless  merriment,  where  cynical 
juries  recklessly  disregard  their  oaths  and  where  mor- 
bid crowds  flock  to  satisfy  the  cravings  of  their  im- 
aginations for  details  of  blood  and  sexuality. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  question  the  honesty  of  those 
who  thus  picture  the  administration  of  criminal  jus- 
tice in  America.  Indeed,  thus  it  probably  appears  to 
them.  But  before  such  an  arraignment  of  present 
conditions  in  a  highly  civilized  and  progressive  na- 
tion is  accepted  as  final,  it  is  well  to  examine  into 
its  inherent  probabilities  and  test  it  by  what  we 
know  of  the  actual  facts. 

In  the  first  place,  it  should  be  remembered  that 
the  jury  was  instituted  and  designed  to  protect  the 
English  freeman  from  tyranny  upon  the  part  of  the 
crown.  Judges  were,  and  sometimes  still  are,  the 
creatures  of  a  ruler  or  unduly  subject  to  his  influence. 
And  that  ruler  neither  was,  nor  is,  always  the  head 

53 


54    SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS 

of  the  nation;  but  just  as  in  the  days  of  the  Nor- 
mans he  might  have  been  a  powerful  earl  whose  in- 
fluence could  make  or  unmake  a  judge,  so  to-day  he 
may  be  none  the  less  a  ruler  if  he  exists  in  the  person 
of  a  political  boss  who  has  created  the  judge  before 
whom  his  political  enemy  is  to  be  tried.  The  writer 
has  seen  more  than  one  judge  openly  striving  to  in- 
fluence a  jury  to  convict  or  to  acquit  a  prisoner  at 
the  dictation  of  such  a  boss,  who,  not  content  to 
issue  his  commands  from  behind  the  arras,  came  to 
the  court-room  and  ascended  the  bench  to  see  that 
they  were  obeyed.  Usually  the  jury  indignantly  re- 
sented such  interference  and  administered  a  well- 
merited  rebuke  by  acting  directly  contrary  to  the 
clearly  indicated  wishes  of  the  judge. 

But  while  admitting  its  theoretic  value  as  a  bul- 
wark of  liberty,  the  modern  assailant  of  the  jury 
brushes  the  consideration  aside  by  asserting  that  the 
system  has  "broken  down"  and  "degenerated  into 
a  farce." 

Let  us  now  see  how  much  of  a  farce  it  is.  If  four 
times  out  of  five  a  judge  rendered  decisions  that 
met  with  general  approval,  he  would  probably  be 
accounted  a  highly  satisfactory  judge.  Now,  out  of 
every  one  hundred  indicted  prisoners  brought  to  the 
bar  for  trial,  probably  fifteen  ought  to  be  acquitted 
if  prosecuted  impartially  and  in  accordance  with  the 
strict  rules  of  evidence.  In  the  year  1910  the  juries 
of  New  York  County  convicted  in  sixty-six  per  cent 
of  the  cases  before  them.  If  we  are  to  test  fairly  the 
efficiency  of  the  system,  we  must  deduct  from  the 


SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS    55 


thirty-four  acquittals  remaining  the  fifteen  acquittals 
which  were  justifiable.  By  so  doing  we  shall  find 
that  in  the  year  1910  the  New  York  County  juries 
did  the  correct  thing  in  about  eighty-one  cases  out 
of  every  hundred.  This  is  a  high  percentage  of  effi- 
ciency.* Is  it  likely  that  any  judge  would  have 
done  much  better? 

After  a  rather  long  experience  as  a  prosecutor,  in 
which  he  has  conducted  many  hundreds  of  criminal 
cases,  the  writer  believes  that  the  ordinary  New  York 
City  jury  finds  a  correct  general  verdict  four  times 
out  of  five.  As  to  talesmen  in  other  localities  he  has 
no  knowledge  or  reliable  information.  It  seems  hardly 
possible,  however,  that  juries  in  other  parts  of  the 
United  States  could  be  more  heterogeneous  or  less 
intelligent  than  those  before  which  he  formed  his 
conclusions.  Of  course,  jury  judgments  are  some- 
times flagrantly  wrong.  But  there  are  many  ver- 
dicts popularly  regarded  as  examples  of  lawlessness 

*  The  following  table  gives  the  yearly  percentages  of  convictions 
and  acquittals  by  verdict  in  New  York  County  since  1901 : 


YEAR 

NUMBER 
CONVICTIONS 
BY  VERDICT 

NUMBER 

'ACQUITTALS 
BY  VERDICT 

CONVICTIONS 
PER  CENT 

ACQUITTALS 

PER  CENT 

1901  

551 

344 

62 

38 

1902  

419 

349 

55 

45 

1903 

485 

307 

61 

39 

1904  

495 

357 

58 

42 

1905  

489 

299 

62 

38 

1906 

464 

246 

65 

35 

1907  

582 

264 

69 

31 

1908 

649 

301 

68 

32 

1909  

463 

235 

66 

34 

1910 

649 

325 

66 

34 

56    SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS 

which,  if  examined  calmly  and  solely  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  evidence,  would  be  found  to  be  the 
reasonable  acts  of  honest  and  intelligent  juries. 

For  example,  the  acquittal  of  Thaw  upon  the  ground 
of  insanity  is  usually  spoken  of  as  an  illustration  of 
sentimentality  on  the  part  of  jurymen,  and  of  their 
willingness  to  be  swayed  by  their  emotions  where  a 
woman  is  involved.  But  few  clearer  cases  of  insanity 
have  been  established  in  a  court  of  justice.  The  dis- 
trict attorney's  own  experts  had  pronounced  the  de- 
fendant a  hopeless  paranoiac;  the  prosecutor  had, 
at  a  previous  trial,  openly  declared  the  same  to  be 
his  own  opinion;  and  the  evidence  was  convincing. 
At  the  time  it  was  rendered,  the  verdict  was  accepted 
as  a  foregone  conclusion.  To-day  the  case  is  com- 
monly cited  as  proof  of  the  gullibility  of  juries  and  of 
the  impossibility  of  convicting  a  rich  man  of  a  crime. 

There  will  always  be  some  persons  who  think  that 
every  defendant  should  be  convicted  and  feel  ag- 
grieved if  he  is  turned  out  by  the  jury.  Yet  they  en- 
tirely forget,  in  their  displeasure  at  the  acquittal  of 
a  man  whom  they  instinctively  "know"  to  be  guilty, 
that  the  jury  probably  had  exactly  the  same  im- 
pression, but  were  obliged  under  their  oaths  to  acquit 
because  of  an  insufficiency  of  evidence. 

An  excellent  illustration  of  such  a  case  is  that  of 
Nan  Patterson.  She  is  commonly  supposed  to  have 
attended,  upon  the  night  of  her  acquittal,  a  banquet 
at  which  one  of  her  lawyers  toasted  her  as  "the  guilty 
girl  who  beat  the  case."  Whether  she  was  guilty  or 
not,  there  is  a  general  and  well-founded  impression 


SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS  57 

that  she  murdered  Caesar  Young.  Yet  the  writer, 
who  was  present  throughout  the  trial,  felt  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  case  that  there  was  a  fairly  reason- 
able doubt  of  her  guilt.  Even  so,  the  jury  disagreed, 
although  the  case  is  usually  referred  to  as  an  acquit- 
tal and  a  monument  to  the  sentimentality  of  juries. 

The  acquittal  of  Roland  B.  Molineux  is  also  re- 
called as  a  case  where  a  man,  previously  proved  guilty, 
managed  to  escape.  The  writer,  who  was  then  an 
assistant  district  attorney,  made  a  careful  study  of 
the  evidence  at  the  time,  and  feels  confident  that  the 
great  majority  of  the  legal  profession  would  agree  with 
him  in  the  opinion  that  the  Court  of  Appeals  had  no 
choice  but  to  reverse  the  defendant's  first  conviction 
on  account  of  the  most  prejudicial  error  committed 
at  the  trial,  and  that  the  jury  who  acquitted  him 
upon  the  second  occasion  had  equally  no  choice  when 
the  case  was  presented  with  a  proper  regard  to  the 
rules  of  evidence  and  procedure.  Indeed,  on  the 
second  trial  the  evidence  pointed  almost  as  convinc- 
ingly toward  another  person  as  toward  the  defendant. 

I  have  mentioned  the  Patterson,  Thaw,  and  Mol- 
ineux trials  because  they  are  cases  commonly  referred 
to  in  support  of  the  general  contention  that  the  jury 
system  is  a  failure.  But  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that 
any  single  judge,  bench  of  judges,  or  board  of  com- 
missioners would  have  reached  the  same  result  as 
the  juries  did  in  these  instances. 

It  is  quite  true  that  juries,  for  rather  obvious  rea- 
sons, are  more  apt  to  acquit  in  murder  cases  than  in 
others.  In  the  first  place,  save  where  the  defendant 
obviously  belongs  to  the  vicious  criminal  class,  a 


58  SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS 

jury  finds  it  somewhat  difficult  to  believe,  unless 
overwhelming  motive  be  shown,  that  he  could  have 
deliberately  taken  another's  life.  Thus,  with  sound 
reason,  they  give  great  weight  to  the  plea  of  self-de- 
fence which  the  accused  urges  upon  them.  He  is 
generally  the  only  witness.  His  story  has  to  be  dis- 
proved by  circumstantial  evidence,  if  indeed  there 
be  any.  Frequently  it  stands  alone  as  the  only  ac- 
count of  the  homicide.  Thus  murder  cases  are  al- 
most always  weaker  than  others,  since  the  chief  wit- 
ness has  been  removed  by  death;  while  at  the  same 
time  the  nature  of  the  punishment  leads  the  jury 
unconsciously  to  require  a  higher  degree  of  proof 
than  in  cases  where  the  consequences  are  less  abhor- 
rent. All  this  is  quite  natural  and  inevitable.  More- 
over, homicide  cases  as  a  rule  are  better  defended 
than  others,  a  fact  which  undoubtedly  affects  the 
result.  These  considerations  apply  to  all  trials  for 
homicide,  notorious  or  otherwise,  the  results  of  which 
in  New  York  County  for  the  past  ten  years  are  set 
forth  in  the  following  table: 


TEAR 

CONVICTIONS 

ACQUITTALS 

CONVICTIONS 
PER  CENT 

ACQUITTALS 
PER  CENT 

1901  

25 

17 

60 

40 

1902 

31 

11 

74 

26 

1903  

42 

8 

84 

16 

1904   . 

37 

14 

72 

28 

1905  

32 

13 

71 

29 

1906 

53 

22 

70 

30 

1907  

39 

10 

78 

22 

1908  

35 

17 

67 

33 

1909  

43 

11 

80 

20 

1910  

45 

15 

75 

25 

Total  

382 

138 

Av.  73 

Av.  27 

SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS  59 

A  popular  impression  exists  at  the  present  time 
that  a  man  convicted  of  murder  has  but  to  appeal 
his  case  on  some  technical  ground  in  order  to  se- 
cure a  reversal,  and  thus  escape  the  consequences  of 
his  crime.  How  wide  of  the  mark  such  a  belief  may 
be,  at  least  so  far  as  one  locality  is  concerned,  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  in  New  York  State,  from  1887 
to  1907,  there  were  169  decisions  by  the  Court  of  Ap- 
peals on  appeals  from  convictions  of  murder  in  the 
first  degree,  out  of  which  there  were  only  twenty- 
nine  reversals.  Seven  of  these  defendants  were  again 
immediately  tried  and  convicted,  and  a  second  time 
appealed,  upon  which  occasion  only  two  were  suc- 
cessful, while  five  had  their  convictions  promptly 
affirmed.  Thus,  so  far  as  the  ultimate  triumph 
of  justice  is  concerned,  out  of  169  cases  in  that 
period  the  appellants  finally  succeeded  in  twenty- 
two  only. 

Since  1902  there  have  been  twenty-seven  de- 
cisions rendered  hi  first-degree  murder  cases  by  the 
Court  of  Appeals,  with  only  three  reversals.*  The 
more  important  convictions  throughout  the  State 
are  affirmed  with  great  regularity. 

As  to  the  conduct  of  such  cases,  the  writer's  own 
experience  is  that  a  murder  trial  is  the  most  solemn 
proceeding  known  to  the  law.  He  has  prosecuted  at 
least  fifty  men  for  murder,  and  convicted  more  than 
he  cares  to  remember.  Such  trials  are  invariably 
dignified  and  deliberate  so  far  as  the  conduct  of  the 
legal  side  of  the  case  is  concerned.  No  judge,  how- 
ever unqualified  for  the  bench;  no  prosecutor,  how- 
*  Written  in  1909. 


60  SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS 

ever  light-minded;  no  lawyer,  however  callous,  fails 
to  feel  the  serious  nature  of  the  transaction  or  to  be 
affected  strongly  by  the  fact  that  he  is  dealing  with 
life  and  death.  A  prosecutor  who  openly  laughed  or 
sneered  at  a  prisoner  charged  with  murder  would 
severely  injure  his  cause.  The  jury,  naturally,  are 
overwhelmed  with  the  gravity  of  the  occasion  and 
the  responsibility  resting  upon  them. 

In  the  Patterson,  Thaw,  and  Molineux  cases  the 
evidence,  unfortunately,  dealt  with  unpleasant  sub- 
jects and  at  times  was  revolting,  but  there  was  a  quiet 
propriety  in  the  way  in  which  the  witnesses  were  ex- 
amined that  rendered  it  as  inoffensive  as  it  could 
possibly  be.  Outside  the  court-room  the  vulgar 
crowd  may  have  spat  and  sworn;  and  inside  no  doubt 
there  were  degenerate  men  and  women  who  eagerly 
strained  their  ears  to  catch  every  item  of  depravity. 
But  the  throngs  that  filled  the  court-room  were  quiet 
and  well  ordered,  and  the  merely  curious  outnum- 
bered the  morbid. 

The  writer  deprecates  the  impulse  which  leads 
judges,  from  a  feeling  that  justice  should  be  publicly 
administered,  to  throw  wide  the  doors  of  every  court- 
room, irrespective  of  the  subject-matter  of  the  trial. 
We  need  have  no  fear  of  Star  Chamber  proceedings 
in  America,  and  no  harm  would  be  done  by  excluding 
from  the  court-room  all  persons  who  have  no  business 
at  a  trial. 

It  is,  of  course,  not  unnatural  that  in  the  course  of 
a  trial  occupying  weeks  or  months  the  tension  should 
occasionally  be  relieved  by  a  gleam  of  humor.  After 
you  have  been  busy  trying  a  case  for  a  couple  of  weeks 


SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS  61 

you  go  to  court  and  set  to  work  in  much  the  same 
frame  of  mind  in  which  you  would  attack  any  other 
business.  But  the  fact  that  a  small  boy  sometimes 
sees  something  funny  at  a  funeral,  or  a  bevy  of  gig- 
gling shop-girls  may  be  sitting  in  the  gallery  at  a 
fashionable  wedding,  argues  little  in  respect  to  the 
solemnity  or  beauty  of  the  service  itself. 

What  are  the  celebrated  cases — the  trials  that  at- 
tract the  attention  and  interest  of  the  public?  In  the 
first  place,  they  are  the  very  cases  which  contain 
those  elements  most  likely  to  arouse  the  sympathy 
and  prejudices  of  a  jury — where  a  girl  has  taken  the 
life  of  her  supposed  seducer,  or  a  husband  has  avenged 
his  wife's  alleged  dishonor.  Such  cases  arouse  the 
public  imagination  for  the  very  reason  that  every 
man  realizes  that  there  are  two  sides  to  every  genuine 
tragedy  of  this  character — the  legal  and  the  natural. 
Thus,  aside  from  any  other  consideration,  they  are 
the  obvious  instances  where  justice  is  most  likely  to 
go  astray. 

In  the  next  place,  the  defence  is  usually  in  the 
hands  of  counsel  of  adroitness  and  ability;  for  even 
if  the  prisoner  has  no  money  to  pay  his  lawyer,  the 
latter  is  willing  to  take  the  case  for  the  advertising 
he  will  get  out  of  it. 

Third,  a  trial  which  lasts  for  a  long  time  naturally 
results  in  creating  in  the  jury's  mind  an  exaggerated 
idea  of  the  prisoner's  rights,  namely,  the  presumption 
of  innocence  and  the  benefit  of  the  reasonable  doubt. 
For  every  time  that  the  jury  will  hear  these  phrases 
once  in  a  petty  larceny  or  forgery  case,  they  will 


62    SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS 

hear  them  in  a  big  murder  trial  a  hundred  times. 
They  see  the  defendant  day  after  day,  and  the  rela- 
tion becomes  more  personal.  Their  responsibility 
seems  greater  toward  him  than  toward  the  defendant 
in  petty  cases. 

Last,  as  previously  suggested,  murder  cases  are 
apt  to  be  inherently  weaker  than  others,  and  more 
often  depend  upon  circumstantial  evidence. 

The  results  of  such  cases  are  therefore  but  a  poor 
test  of  the  efficiency  of  a  jury  system.  They  are,  in 
fact,  the  precise  cases  where,  if  at  all,  the  jury  might 
be  expected  to  go  wrong. 

But  juries  would  go  astray  far  less  frequently  even 
in  such  trials  were  it  not  for  that  most  vicious  factor 
in  the  administration  of  criminal  justice — the  "yel- 
low" journal.  For  the  impression  that  public  trials 
are  the  scenes  of  coarse  buffoonery  and  brutality  is 
due  to  the  manner  in  which  these  trials  are  exploited 
by  the  sensational  papers. 

The  instant  that  a  sensational  homicide  occurs, 
the  aim  of  the  editors  of  these  papers  is — not  to  see 
that  a  swift  and  sure  retribution  is  visited  upon  the 
guilty,  or  that  a  prompt  and  unqualified  vindication 
is  accorded  to  the  innocent,  but,  on  the  contrary,  so 
to  handle  the  matter  that  as  many  highly  colored 
"stories"  as  possible  can  be  run  about  it. 

Thus,  where  the  case  is  perfectly  clear  against  the 
prisoner,  the  "yellow"  press  seeks  to  bolster  up  the 
defence  and  really  to  justify  the  killing  by  a  thinly 
disguised  appeal  to  the  readers'  passions.  Not  in- 
frequently, while  the  editorial  page  is  mourning  the 


SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS    63 

prevalence  of  homicide,  the  front  columns  are  brist- 
ling with  sensational  accounts  of  the  home-coming  of 
the  injured  husband,  the  heart-breaking  confession 
of  the  weak  and  erring  wife,  and  the  sneering  non- 
chalance of  the  seducer,  until  a  public  sentiment  is 
created  which,  if  it  outwardly  deprecates  the  invo- 
cation of  the  unwritten  law,  secretly  avows  that  it 
would  have  done  the  same  thing  in  the  prisoner's 
place. 

This  antecedent  public  sentiment  is  fostered  from 
day  to  day  until  it  has  unconsciously  permeated  every 
corner  of  the  community.  The  juryman  will  swear 
that  he  is  unaffected  by  what  he  has  read,  but  un- 
known to  himself  there  are  already  tiny  furrows  in 
his  brain  along  which  the  appeal  of  the  defence  will 
run. 

In  view  of  this  deliberate  perversion  of  truth  and 
morals,  the  euphemisms  of  a  hard-put  defendant's 
counsel  when  he  pictures  a  chorus  girl  as  an  angel 
and  a  coarse  bounder  as  a  St.  George  seem  innocent 
indeed.  It  is  not  within  the  rail  of  the  court-room 
but  within  the  pages  of  these  sensational  journals 
that  justice  is  made  a  farce.  The  phrase  "contempt 
of  court"  has  ceased  practically  to  have  any  signifi- 
cance whatever.  The  front  pages  teem  with  carica- 
tures of  the  judge  upon  the  bench,  of  the  individual 
jurors  with  exaggerated  heads  upon  impossible 
bodies,  of  the  lawyers  ranting  and  bellowing,  juxta- 
posed with  sketches  of  the  defendant  praying  beside 
his  prison  cot  or  firing  the  fatal  shot  in  obedience  to 
a  message  borne  by  an  angel  from  on  high. 


64    SENSATIONALISM  AND  JURY  TRIALS 

How  long  would  the  "unwritten  law"  play  any 
part  in  the  administration  of  criminal  justice  if  every 
paper  hi  the  land  united  hi  demanding,  not  only  in 
its  editorials,  but  upon  its  front  pages,  that  private 
vengeance  must  cease ?  Let  the ' '  yellow ' '  newspapers 
confine  themselves  simply  to  an  accurate  report  of 
the  evidence  at  the  trial,  with  a  reiterated  insistence 
that  the  law  must  take  its  course.  Let  them  stop 
pandering  to  those  morbid  tastes  which  they  have 
themselves  created.  Let  the  "Sympathy  Sisters," 
the  photographer,  and  the  special  artist  be  excluded 
from  the  court-room.  When  these  things  are  done, 
we  shall  have  the  same  high  standard  of  efficiency 
upon  the  part  of  the  jury  in  great  murder  trials  that 
we  have  in  other  cases. 


CRIMINALS 


CHAPTER  IV 

WHY  DO  MEN  KILL? 

WHEN  a  shrewd  but  genial  editor  called  me  up 
on  the  telephone  and  asked  me  how  I  should  like 
to  write  an  article  (a  "story,"  he  called  it)  on  the 
above  lurid  title,  I  laughed  in  his — I  mean  the  tele- 
phone's face. 

"My  dear  fellow!"  I  said  (I  should  only  have  the 
nerve  to  call  him  that  over  a  wire) .  "  My  dear  fellow ! 
It  would  ruin  me!  How  could  I  keep  my  self-respect 
and  write  that  kind  of  sensational  stuff — me,  a  repu- 
table, conservative,  dry-as-dust  member  of  the  bar! 
Go  to!  Why  do  men  kill?  Ha-ha!  Why  do  men 
eat?  Why  do  men  drink?  Why  do  men  love?  Why 
do  men " 

"Yes,"  came  back  his  somewhat  cynical  voice 
"Why?" 

"How  do  I  know?"  I  answered,  still  trying  to  be 
jocular.  "/  never  killed  anybody!" 

"Eh?"  said  he. 

I  paused. 

"Well,"  I  admitted,  "never  actually  with  my  own 
hand,  old  chap!  I  have — taken  part — so  to  speak — 
in — er — proceedings  that  ultimately  resulted  in  the 
death  of  certain  human  beings — in  a  perfectly  legal 
way,  but  I'm  not  sure  that  I  entirely  approved  of 

67 


68  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

it.     Duty,  you  know!    Salary — I  had  a  growing 
family." 

"  Look  here ! "  he  interrupted.  "  I  want  that  story. 
I  want  to  know  something.  I  do!  I  want  to  know 
why  one  man  kills  another  man.  If  we  knew  why, 
maybe  we  could  stop  it,  couldn't  we?  We  could  try 
to,  anyhow.  '  And  you  know  something  about  it. 
You've  prosecuted  nearly  a  hundred  men  for  mur- 
der. Get  the  facts — that's  what  I  want.  Cut  the 
adjectives  and  morality,  and  get  down  to  the  reasons. 
Anything  particularly  undignified  about  that?" 
,  "N — o,"  I  began,  taking  a  fresh  start. 

"All  right,"  he  replied  crisply.  "Send  it  up  for 
January."  And  he  rang  off. 

I  arose  and  walked  over  to  the  bookcase  on  which 
reposed  several  shelves  of  "minutes"  of  criminal 
trials.  They  were  dusty  and  depressing.  Practically 
every  one  of  them  was  a  memento  of  some  poor  devil 
gone  to  prison  or  to  the  chair.  Where  were  they  now 
— and  why  did  they  kill — yes,  why  did  they? 

I  glanced  along  the  red-labeled  backs. 

"People  versus  Candido."  Now  why  did  he  kill? 
I  remembered  the  Italian  perfectly.  He  killed  his 
friend  because  the  latter  had  been  too  attentive  to 
his  wife.  "People  versus  Higgins."  Why  did  he? 
That  was  a  drunken  row  on  a  New  Year's  Eve  within 
the  sound  of  Trinity  chimes.  "  People  versus  Sterling 
Greene."  Yes,  he  was  a  colored  man — I  recalled 
the  evidence — drink  and  a  "yellow  gal."  "People 
versus  Mock  Duck" — a  Chinese  feud  between  the 
On  Leong  Tong  and  the  Hip  Sing  Tong — a  vendetta, 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ?  69 

first  one  Chink  shot  and  then  another,  turn  and  turn 
about,  running  back  through  Mott  Street,  New  York, 
Boston,  San  Francisco,  until  the  origin  of  the  quarrel 
was  lost  in  the  dim  Celestial  mists  across  the  sea. 
Out  of  the  first  four  cases  the  following  motives: 
Jealousy — 1.  Drink — 1.  Drink  and  jealousy — 1. 
Scattering  (how  can  you  term  a  "Tong"  row?) — 1. 
I  began  to  get  interested.  Supposing  I  dug  out  all 
the  homicide  cases  I  had  ever  tried,  what  would  the 
result  show  as  to  motive  for  the  killing?  Would 
drink  and  women  account  for  seventy-five  per  cent? 
Mentally  I  ran  my  eye  back  over  nearly  ten  years. 
What  other  motives  had  the  defendants  at  the  bar 
had?  There  was  Laudiero — an  Italian  "  Camorrista  " 
— he  had  killed  simply  for  the  distinction  it  gave  him 
among  his  countrymen  and  the  satisfaction  he  felt 
at  being  known  as  a  "bad"  man — a  "capo  maestra." 
There  was  Joseph  Ferrone — pure  jealousy  again. 
Hendry — animal  hate  intensified  by  drink.  Yoscow 
— a  deliberate  murder,  planned  in  advance  by  several 
of  a  gang,  to  get  rid  of  a  young  bully  who  had  made 
himself  generally  unpleasant.  There  was  Childs, 
who  had  killed,  as  he  claimed,  in  self-defence  because 
he  was  set  upon  and  assaulted  by  rival  runners  from 
another  seaman's  boarding  house.  Really  it  began 
to  look  as  if  men  killed  for  a  lot  of  reasons.  I  wanted 
to  call  up  my  friend  and  ask  what  kind  of  killings 
counted.  Did  he  simply  want  to  know  why  men 
murdered  one  another?  He  couldn't  possibly  nlean 
that  I  was  to  attempt  to  explain  why  they  saw  fit  to 
exterminate  each  other  by  means  of  capital  punish- 


70  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

ment?  Or  ran  over  one  another  in  trains  and  auto- 
mobiles? Or  allowed  each  other  to  die  from  un- 
sanitary conditions?  Or  lynched  one  another? — 
there  was  only  one  reason  for  that  I  knew.  Or  killed 
themselves?  Nor  did  he  mean  to  have  me  go  into 
the  question  of  why  they  killed  elsewhere — in  Naples, 
Sicily,  Constantinople,  and  so  on.  No;  what  he 
wanted  to  find  out  was  why  men  in  the  United  States 
of  America  killed  other  men  of  their  own  kind  without 
malice  aforethought — legal  and  quasi-legal  killings 
excluded.  Moreover,  he  wanted  to  know  from  the 
actual  personal  experience  of  those  who  had  weighed 
the  evidence  as  to  their  motives  in  a  sufficiently  large 
number  of  cases  to  be  representative. 

One  consideration  at  once  suggested  itself.  How 
about  the  killings  where  the  murderer  is  never  caught? 
The  prisoners  tried  for  murder  are  only  a  mere  frac- 
tion of  those  who  commit  murder.  True,  and  the 
more  deliberate  the  murder,  the  greater,  unfortu- 
nately, the  chance  of  the  villain  getting  away.  Still, 
in  cases  merely  of  suspected  murder,  or  in  cases  where 
no  evidence  is  taken,  it  would  be  manifestly  unfair 
arbitrarily  to  assign  motives  for  the  deed,  if  deed  it 
was.  No,  one  must  start  with  the  assumption,  suffi- 
ciently accurate  under  all  the  circumstances,  that 
the  killings  in  which  the  killer  is  caught  are  fairly 
representative  of  killings  as  a  whole. 

All  crimes  naturally  tend  to  divide  themselves  into 
two  classes — crimes  against  property  and  crimes 
against  the  person,  each  class  having  an  entirely 
different  assortment  of  reasons  for  their  commission. 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ?  71 

There  can  be  practically  but  one  motive  for  theft, 
burglary,  or  robbery.  It  is,  of  course,  conceivable  that 
such  crimes  might  be  perpetrated  for  revenge — to 
deprive  the  victim  of  some  highly  prized  possession. 
But  in  the  main  there  is  only  one  object — unlawful 
gain.  So,  too,  blackmail,  extortion,  and  kidnapping 
are  all  the  products  of  the  desire  for  "easy  money." 
But,  unquestionably,  this  is  the  reason  for  murder  in 
comparatively  few  cases. 

The  usual  motive  for  crimes  against  the  person — 
assault,  manslaughter,  mayhem,  murder,  etc. — is  the 
desire  to  punish,  or  be  avenged  upon  another  by  in- 
flicting personal  pain  upon  him  or  by  depriving  him 
of  his  most  valuable  asset — life.  And  this  desire  for 
retaliation  or  revenge  generally  grows  out  of  a  recent 
humiliation  received  at  the  hands  of  the  other  per- 
son, a  real  or  fancied  wrong  to  oneself,  a  member  of 
one's  family,  or  one's  property.  But  this  was  too 
easy  an  answer  to  my  friend's  question.  He  could 
have  got  that  much  out  of  any  elementary  text-book 
on  penology.  He  wanted  and  deserved  more  than 
that,  and  I  set  out  to  give  it  to  him. 

My  first  inquiry  was  in  the  direction  of  original 
sources.  I  sought  out  the  man  in  the  district  attor- 
ney's office  who  had  had  the  widest  general  experience 
and  put  the  question  to  him.  This  was  Mr.  Charles 
C.  Nott,  Jr.,  who  has  been  trying  murder  cases  for 
nearly  ten  years.  It  so  happened  that  he  had  kept  a 
complete  record  of  all  of  them  and  this  he  courteously 
placed  at  my  disposal.  The  list  contains  sixty-two 
cases,  and  the  defendants  were  of  divers  races.  These 


72  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

homicides  included  seventeen  committed  in  cold  blood 
(about  twenty-five  per  cent,  an  extraordinary  per- 
centage) from  varying  motives,  as  follows:  One  de- 
fendant (white)  murdered  his  colored  mistress  sim- 
ply to  get  rid  of  her;  another  killed  out  of  revenge 
because  the  deceased  had  "licked"  him  several 
times  before;  another,  having  quarrelled  with  his 
friend  over  a  glass  of  soda  water,  later  on  returned 
and  precipitated  a  quarrel  by  striking  him,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  killed  him;  another  because  the 
deceased  had  induced  his  wife  to  desert  him;  another 
lay  in  wait  for  his  victim  and  killed  him  without  the 
motive  ever  being  ascertained;  one  man  killed  his 
brother  to  get  a  sum  of  money,  and  another  because 
his  brother  would  not  give  him  money;  another  be- 
cause he  believed  the  deceased  had  betrayed  the 
Armenian  cause  to  the  Turks;  another  because  he 
wished  to  get  the  deceased  out  of  the  way  in  order 
to  marry  his  wife;  and  another  because  deceased 
had  knocked  him  down  the  day  before.  One  man 
had  killed  a  girl  who  had  ridiculed  him;  and  one  a 
girl  who  had  refused  to  marry  him;  another  had 
killed  his  daughter  because  she  could  no  longer  live 
in  the  house  with  him;  one,  an  informer,  had  been 
the  victim  of  a  Black  Hand  vendetta;  and  the  last 
had  poisoned  his  wife  for  the  insurance  money  in 
order  to  go  off  with  another  woman.  There  were  two 
cases  of  infanticide,  one  in  which  a  woman  threw 
her  baby  into  the  lake  in  Central  Park,  and  another 
in  which  she  gave  her  baby  poison.  Besides  these 
murders,  five  homicides  had  been  committed  in  the 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ?  73 

course  of  perpetrating  other  crimes,  including  burg- 
lary and  robbery. 

Passing  over  three  cases  of  culpable  negligence  re- 
sulting in  death,  we  come  to  thirty-seven  homicides 
during  quarrels,  some  of  which  might  have  been  tech- 
nically classified  as  murders,  but  which,  being  com- 
mitted "in  the  heat  of  passion,"  in  practically  every 
instance  resulted  in  a  verdict  of  manslaughter.  The 
quarrels  often  arose  over  the  most  trifling  matters. 
One  was  a  dispute  over  a  broom,  another  over  a  horse 
blanket,  another  over  food,  another  over  a  twenty- 
five-cent  bet  in  a  pool  game,  another  over  a  loan  of 
fifty  cents,  another  over  ten  cents  in  a  crap  game,  and 
still  another  over  one  dollar  and  thirty  cents  in  a  crap 
game.  Five  men  were  killed  in  drunken  rows  which 
had  no  immediate  cause  except  the  desire  to  "start 
something."  One  man  killed  another  because  he  had 
not  prevented  the  theft  of  some  lumber,  one  (a  po- 
liceman) because  the  deceased  would  not  "move  on" 
when  ordered,  one  because  a  bartender  refused  to 
serve  him  with  any  more  drinks,  and  one  (a  bartender) 
because  the  deceased  insisted  that  he  should  serve 
more  drinks.  One  man  was  killed  in  a  quarrel  over 
politics,  one  in  a  fuss  over  some  beer,  one  in  a  card 
game,  one  trying  to  rob  a  fruit-stand,  one  in  a  dis- 
pute with  a  ship's  officer,  one  in  a  dance  hall  row. 
One  man  killed  another  whom  he  found  with  his 
wife,  and  one  wife  killed  her  husband  for  a  similar 
cause;  another  wife  killed  her  husband  simply  be- 
cause she  "could  not  stand  him,"  and  one  because 
he  was  fighting  with  their  son.  One  man  was  killed 


74  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

by  another  who  was  trying  to  collect  from  him  a 
debt  of  six  hundred  dollars.  One  quarrel  resulting 
in  homicide  arose  because  the  defendant  had  pointed 
out  deceased  to  the  police,  another  because  the  par- 
ticipants called  each  other  names,  and  another  arose 
out  of  an  alleged  seduction.  Three  homicides  grew 
out  of  street  rows  originating  in  various  ways.  One 
man  killed  another  who  was  fighting  with  a  friend 
of  the  first,  a  janitor  was  killed  in  a  "continuous 
row"  which  had  been  going  on  for  a  long  time,  and 
one  homicide  was  committed  for  "nothing  in  par- 
ticular." 

This  astonishing  olla  podrida  of  reasons  for  de- 
priving men  of  their  lives  leaves  one  stunned  and 
confused.  Is  it  possible  to  deduce  any  order  out  of 
such  homicidal  chaos?  Still,  an  attempt  to  classify 
such  diverse  causes  enables  one  to  reach  certain  gen- 
eral conclusions.  Out  of  the  sixty-two  homicides 
there  were  seventeen  cold-blooded  murders,  with  de- 
liberation and  premeditation  (in  such  cases  the  rea- 
sons for  the  killing  are  by  comparison  unimportant) ; 
three  homicides  due  to  negligence,  five  committed 
while  perpetrating  a  felony;  thirty-seven  man- 
slaughters, due  in  sixteen  cases  to  quarrels  (simply), 
thirteen  to  drink,  four  to  disputes  over  money,  three 
to  women,  one  to  race  antagonism. 

Reclassifying  the  seventeen  murders  according  to 
causes,  we  have:  Six  due  to  women,  four  to  quarrels, 
five  to  other  causes,  and  two  infanticides.  Added  to 
the  manslaughters  previously  classified,  we  have  a 
total  of  sixty-two  killings,  due  in  twenty  cases  to 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ?  75 

quarrels,  thirteen  to  drink,  nine  to  women,  four  to 
disputes  over  money,  one  to  race  antagonism,  five 
to  general  causes,  three  to  negligence,  two  in- 
fanticides, five  during  the  commission  of  other 
crimes. 

The  significant  features  of  this  analysis  are  that 
about  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  killings  were  due 
to  quarrels  over  small  sums  or  other  matters,  drink 
and  women;  over  fifty  per  cent  to  drink  and  petty 
quarrels,  and  about  thirty  per  cent  to  quarrels  sim- 
ply. The  trifling  character  of  the  causes  of  the  quar- 
rels themselves  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  three  of 
these  particular  cases,  tried  in  a  single  week,  the  total 
amount  involved  in  the  disputes  was  only  eighty-five 
cents.  That  is  about  twenty-eight  and  one-half  cents 
a  life.  Many  a  murder  in  a  barroom  grows  out  of 
an  argument  over  whether  a  glass  of  beer  has,  or 
has  not,  been  paid  for,  or  whose  turn  it  is  to  treat; 
and  more  than  one  man  has  been  killed  in  New  York 
City  because  he  was  too  clumsy  to  avoid  stepping 
on  somebody's  feet  or  bumping  into  another  man  on 
the  sidewalk. 

The  writer  sincerely  regrets  that  his  own  lack  of 
initiative  prevented  his  keeping  a  diary  similar  to 
that  of  his  colleague,  Mr.  Nott,  during  his  seven 
years'  service  as  a  prosecutor.  It  is  now  impossible 
for  him  to  refresh  his  memory  as  to  the  causes  of  all 
the  various  homicides  which  he  prosecuted,  but  where 
he  can  do  so  the  evidence  points  to  a  conclusion  sim- 
ilar to  that  deduced  from  Mr.  Nott's  record.  The 
proximate  causes  were  trifling — the  underlying  cause 


76  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

was  the  lack  of  civilization  of  the  defendant — his  bru- 
tality and  absence  of  self-control. 

With  a  view  to  ascertaining  conditions  in  general 
throughout  the  United  States,  I  asked  a  clipping 
agency  to  send  me  the  first  one  hundred  notices  of 
actual  homicides  which  should  come  under  its  scis- 
sors. The  immediate  result  of  this  experiment  was 
that  I  received  forty-five  notices  supposedly  relat- 
ing to  murders  and  homicides,  which  on  closer  exam- 
ination proved  to  be  anything  but  what  I  wanted 
for  the  purpose  in  view.  With  only  one  or  two  excep- 
tions they  related  not  to  deaths  from  violence  re- 
ported as  having  occurred  on  any  particular  day,  but 
to  notices  of  convictions,  acquittals,  indictments, 
pleas  of  guilty  and  not  guilty,  rewards  offered, 
sentences,  executions,  "suspicions"  of  the  police, 
"mysteries  revived,"  and  even  editorials  on  capital 
punishment. 

A  letter  of  protest  brought  in  due  course,  but  much 
more  slowly,  one  hundred  and  seven  clippings,  which 
yielded  the  following  reasons  why  men  killed: 
There  were  four  suicides,  three  lynchings,  one  infan- 
ticide, three  murders  while  resisting  arrest,  three 
criminals  killed  while  resisting  arrest,  two  men  killed 
in  riots,  eight  murders  in  the  course  of  committing 
burglaries  and  robberies,  seven  persons  killed  in  ven- 
dettas, three  race  murders,  and  twenty-four  killed 
in  quarrels  over  petty  causes;  there  were  twelve 
murders  from  jealousy,  followed  in  four  instances 
by  suicide  on  the  part  of  the  murderer;  six  killings 
justifiable  on  the  "higher  law"  theory  only,  but 


WHY  DO  M£?N  KILL  ?  77 


involving  great  provocation,  and  thinfjr  deliberate 
slaughters.  The  last  clipping  recounted  how  ian  irate 
husband  pounded  a  "masher"  so  hard  that  ho  died. 
Leaving  out  the  suicides  and  those  killed  whita  re- 
sisting arrest,  there  remain  one  hundred  persons  mur- 
dered, not  only  by  persons  insane  or  wild  from  the 
effects  of  liquor,  but  by  robbers  and  burglars,  brutes, 
bullies,  and  thugs,  husbands,  wives,  and  lovers,  and 
by  a  vast  number  of  people  who  not  only  destroyed 
their  enemies  in  the  fury  of  anger,  but  in  many  in- 
stances openly  went  out  gunning  for  them,  lay  in  wait 
for  them  in  the  dark,  or  hacked  off  their  heads  with 
hatchets  while  they  slept. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  sanguinary  record,  from  which  little 
consolation  is  to  be  derived,  and  the  only  comfort  is 
the  probability  that  the  accounts  of  the  first  one 
hundred  murders  anywhere  in  Europe  would  un- 
doubtedly be  just  as  blood-curdling.  I  had  simply 
asked  the  clipping  bureau  to  send  me  one  hundred 
horrors  and  I  had  got  them.  They  did  not  indi- 
cate anything  at  all  so  far  as  the  ratio  of  homicide 
to  .population  was  concerned  or  as  to  the  blood- 
thirstiness  of  Americans  in  general.  They  merely 
showed  what  despicable  things  murders  were. 

As  to  the  reasons  for  the  killings,  they  were  as 
diverse  as  those  which  Mr.  Nott  had  prosecuted, 
save  that  there  were  more  of  an  ultra  blood-thirsty 
character,  due  probably  to  the  fact  that  the  young 
lady  who  did  the  clipping  wanted  (after  one  rebuff) 
to  make  sure  that  I  was  satisfied  with  the  goods  she 
sent  me.  And  this  suggests  a  reason  for  the  large 


78  WHY  DO  MJ2S  KILL  ? 

percentage  of  cd&JiJiooded  killings  prosecuted  by  my 
friend— namely,  that  Mr.  Nott  being  the  most  as- 
tute prosecutor  available,  the  district  attorney,  when- 
evev  the  latter  had  a  particularly  atrocious  case,  sent 
it  to  him  in  order  that  the  defendant  might  surety  get 
his  full  deserts. 

The  reasons  for  these  homicides  were  of  every  sort; 
police  officers  and  citizens  were  shot  and  killed  by 
criminals  trying  to  make  "get-aways,"  and  by  ne- 
groes and  others  "running  amuck";  despondent 
young  men  shot  their  unresponsive  sweethearts  and 
then  either  blew  out  their  own  brains  or  pretended 
to  try  to  do  so;  two  stable-men  had  a  duel  with  re- 
volvers, and  each  killed  the  other;  several  men  were 
shot  for  being  too  attentive  to  young  women  residing 
in  the  same  hotels;  an  Italian,  whose  wife  had  left 
him  and  gone  to  her  mother,  went  to  the  house  and 
killed  her,  her  sister,  her  sister's  husband,  his  mother- 
in-law,  two  children,  and  finally  himself;  the  "  Gopher 
Gang"  started  a  riot  at  a  "benefit"  dance  given  to 
a  widow  and  killed  a  man,  after  which  they  fled  to 
the  woods  and  fired  from  cover  upon  the  police  until 
eighteen  were  overpowered  and  arrested;  a  young 
girl  and  her  fiance,  sitting  in  the  parlor,  planning 
their  honeymoon,  were  unexpectedly  interrupted  by  a 
rejected  suitor  of  the  girl's,  who  shot  and  killed  both 
of  them;  an  Italian  who  peeked  into  a  bedroom,  just 
for  fun,  afterward  rushed  in  and  cut  off  two  persons' 
heads  with  an  ax — one  of  them  was  his  wife;  a  gang 
of  white  ruffians  shot  and  then  burned  a  negro  fam- 
ily of  three  peacefully  working  in  the  fields;  a  man 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ?  79 

who  went  to  the  front  door  to  see  who  had  tapped 
on  his  window  was  shot  through  the  heart;  a  striker 
was  killed  by  a  twenty-five-pound  piece  of  flagging 
thrown  from  a  roof;  there  was  a  gun  fight  of  colored 
men  at  Madison,  Wisconsin,  at  which  three  were 
shot;  a  gang  of  negro  ruffians  killed  and  mutilated 
a  white  woman  (with  a  baby  in  her  arms)  and  her 
husband;  masked  robbers  called  a  man  to  his  barn 
at  Winston-Salem,  North  Carolina,  and  cut  his 
throat;  an  Italian  was  found  with  his  head  split  in 
two  by  a  butcher's  cleaver;  a  negress  in  Lafayette, 
Louisiana,  killed  a  family  of  six  with  a  hatchet;  a 
negro  farmer  and  his  two  daughters  were  lynched 
and  their  bodies  burned  by  four  white  men  (who  will 
probably  also  be  lynched  if  caught) ;  a  girl  of  eleven 
shot  her  girl  friend  of  about  the  same  age  and  killed 
her;  several  persons  were  found  stabbed  to  death; 
a  plumber  killed  his  brother  (also  a  plumber)  for  say- 
ing that  he  stole  two  dollars;  a  murderer  was  shot 
by  a  posse  of  militia  in  a  cornfield;  a  card  game  at 
Bayonne,  New  Jersey,  resulted  in  a  revolver  fight 
on  the  street  in  which  one  of  the  players  was  killed; 
bank  robbers  killed  a  cashier  at  twelve  o'clock  noon; 
a  jealous  lover  hi  Butte,  Montana,  shot  and  killed 
his  sweetheart,  her  father,  and  mother;  a  deputy 
sheriff  was  murdered;  burglars  killed  several  persons 
in  the  course  of  their  business;  Kokolosski,  a  Pole, 
kicked  his  child  to  death;  and  a  couple  of  dozen  peo- 
ple were  incidentally  shot,  stabbed,  or  otherwise 
disposed  of  in  the  course  of  quarrels  over  the  most 
trivial  matters.  In  almost  no  case  was  there  what 


80  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

an  intelligent,  civilized  man  would  regard  as  an  ade- 
quate reason  for  the  homicide.  They  killed  because 
they  felt  like  killing,  and  yielded  to  the  impulse, 
whatever  its  immediate  origin. 

This  conclusion  is  abundantly  supported  by  the 
figures  of  the  Chicago  Tribune  for  the  seven  years 
ending  in  1900,  when  carefully  analyzed.  During 
this  period  62,812  homicides  were  recorded.  Of  these 
there  were  17,120  of  which  the  causes  were  unknown 
and  3,204  committed  while  making  a  justifiable  ar- 
rest, in  self-defence,  or  by  the  insane,  so  that  there 
were  in  fact  only  42,488  felonious  homicides  the 
causes  of  which  can  be  definitely  alleged.  The  ratio 
of  the  "quarrels"  to  this  net  total  is  about  seventy- 
five  per  cent.  There  were,  in  addition,  2,848  homi- 
cides due  to  liquor — that  is,  without  cause.  Thus 
eighty  per  cent  of  all  the  murders  and  manslaughters 
in  the  United  States  for  a  period  of  seven  years  were 
for  no  reason  at  all  or  from  mere  anger  or  habit,  aris- 
ing out  of  causes  often  of  the  most  trifling  character. 

Nor  are  the  conclusions  changed  by  the  figures  of 
the  years  between  1904  and  1909. 

During  this  period  61,786  homicides  were  recorded. 
Of  these  there  were  9,302  of  which  the  causes  were 
not  known,  and  2,480  committed  while  making  a 
justifiable  arrest,  in  self-defence,  or  by  the  insane, 
leaving  50,004  cases  of  felonious  homicides  of  known 
causes.  Of  these  homicides,  33,476  were  due  to  quar- 
rels and  4,799  to  liquor,  a  total  of  38,275  out  of  the 
50,004  cases  of  known  causes  being  traceable  in  this, 
another  seven  years,  to  motives  the  most  casual.  <• 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ?  81 

It  would  be  stupid  to  allege  that  the  reason  men 
killed  was  because  they  had  been  stepped  on  or  had 
been  deprived  of  a  glass  of  beer.  The  cause  lies 
deeper  than  that.  It  rests  in  the  willingness  or  de- 
sire of  the  murderer  to  kill  at  all.  Among  barbaric 
or  savage  peoples  this  is  natural;  but  among  civilized 
nations  it  is  hardly  to  be  anticipated.  If  the  negro 
who  shoots  his  fellow  because  he  believes  himself  to 
have  been  cheated  out  of  ten  cents  were  really  civil- 
ized, he  would  either  not  have  the  impulse  to  kill  or; 
having  the  impulse  to  kill,  would  have  sufficient 
power  of  self-control  to  refrain  from  doing  so.  This 
power  of  self-control  may  be  natural  or  acquired,  and 
it  may  or  may  not  be  possessed  by  the  man  who  feels 
a  desire  to  commit  a  homicide.  The  fact  to  be  ob- 
served— the  interesting  and,  broadly  speaking,^  the 
astonishing  fact — is  that  among  a  people  like  our- 
selves anybody  should  have  a  desire  to  kill.  It  is 
even  more  astonishing  than  that  the  impulse  should 
be  yielded  to  so  often  if  it  comes. 

This,  then,  is  the  real  reason  why  men  kill — be- 
cause it  is  inherent  in  their  state  of  mind,  it  is  part 
of  their  mental  and  physical  make-up — they  are 
ready  to  kill,  they  want  to  kill,  they  are  the  kind  of 
men  who  do  kill.  This  is  the  result  of  their  heredity, 
environment,  educational  and  religious  training,  or 
the  absence  of  it.  How  many  readers  of  this  paper 
have  ever  experienced  an  actual  desire  to  kill  another 
human  being?  Probably  not  one  hundredth  of  one 
per  cent.  They  belong  to  the  class  of  people  who 
either  never  have  such  an  impulse,  or  at  any  rate 


82  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

have  been  taught  to  keep  such  impulses  under  con- 
trol. Hence  it  is  futile  to  try  to  explain  that  some 
men  kill  for  a  trifling  sum  of  money,  some  because 
they  feel  insulted,  others  because  of  political  or  labor 
disputes,  or  because  they  do  not  like  their  food. 
Any  one  of  these  may  be  the  match  that  sets  off  the 
gunpowder,  but  the  real  cause  of  the  killing  is  the 
fact  that  the  gunpowder  is  there,  lying  around  loose, 
and  ready  to  be  touched  off.  What  engenders  this 
gunpowder  state  of  mind  would  make  a  valuable 
sociological  study,  but  it  may  well  be  that  a  seemingly 
inconsequential  fact  may  so  embitter  a  boy  or  man 
toward  life  or  the  human  race  in  general  that  in  time 
he  "sees  red"  and  goes  through  the  world  looking 
for  trouble.  Any  cause  that  makes  for  crime  and  de- 
pravity makes  for  murder  as  well.  The  little  boy 
who  is  driven  out  of  the  tenement  onto  the  street, 
and  in  turn  off  the  street  by  a  policeman,  until,  find- 
ing no  wholesome  place  to  play,  he  joins  a  "gang" 
and  begins  an  incipient  career  of  crime,  may  end  in 
the  "death  house." 

The  table  on  the  opposite  page  gives  the  figures  col- 
lected by  the  Chicago  Tribune  for  the  years  from 
1881  to  1910: 

In  view  of  the  foregoing  it  may  seem  paradoxical 
for  the  writer  to  state  that  he  questions  the  alleged 
unusual  tendency  to  commit  murder  on  the  part  of 
citizens  of  the  United  States.  Yet  of  one  fact  he  is 
absolutely  convinced — namely,  that  homicide  has 
substantially  decreased  in  the  last  fifteen  years.  Even 
according  to  the  figures  collected  by  the  Chicago 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 


83 


Tribune,  there  were  but  8,975  homicides  in  1910  as 
compared  with  10,500  in  1895,  and  10,652  in  1896. 

NUMBER  OF  MURDERS  AND  HOMICIDES  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  EACH 
YEAR  SINCE  1881,  COMPARED  WITH  THE  POPULATION 


TEAR 

NUMBER  OF 
MURDERS  AND 
HOMICIDES  IN 
THE   UNITED 
STATES 

ESTIMATED 
POPULATION 
OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

NUMBER  OF 
MURDERS  AND 
HOMICIDES 
FOR  EACH 
MILLION   OF 
PEOPLE 

1881 

1,266 

51,316,000 

24.7 

1882.                  

1,467 

27.9 

1883 

1  697 

316 

1884 

1,465 

26.7 

1885  

1,808 

56,148,000 

32.2 

1886 

1499 

26  1 

1887    . 

2,335 

39.8 

1888  

2,184 

36.4 

1889 

3,567 

582 

1890     .     .            

4,290 

62,622,250 

68.5 

1891  

5,906 

92.4 

1892 

6,791 

104.2 

1893     .             

6,615 

99.5 

1894  

9,800 

144.7 

1895 

10500 

69,043,000 

152.2 

1896    

10,652 

151.3 

1897  

9,520 

132.8 

1898 

7,840 

107.2 

1899                      

6,225 

83.6 

1900  

8,275 

75,994,575 

108.7 

1901 

7,852 

77,754,000 

100.9 

1902  

8,834 

79,117,000 

111.7 

1903 

8976 

112.0 

1904 

8,482 

1905  

9,212 

1906 

9350 

1907 

8712 

1908  

8,952 

1909  

8,103 

1910 

8,975 

91,972,266 

97.5 

Total  

191,150 

Meantime  the  population  of  our  country  has  been 
leaping  onward. 


84  WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ? 

We  are  blood-thirsty  enough,  God  knows,  without 
making  things  out  any  worse  than  they  are  or  juggling 
the  figures.  Our  murder  rate  per  100,000  unquestion- 
ably exceeds  that  of  most  of  the  countries  of  western 
Europe,  but,  as  the  saying  is,  "there's  a  reason."  If 
our  homicide  statistics  related  only  to  the  white  pop- 
ulation of  even  the  second  generation  born  in  this 
country  we  should  find,  I  am  convinced,  that  we  are 
no  more  homicidal  than  France  and  Belgium,  and 
less  so  than  Italy.  It  is  to  be  expected  that  with  our 
Chinese,  "greaser,"  and  half-breed  population  in  the 
West,  our  Black  Belt  in  the  South,  and  our  Sicilian 
and  South  Italian  immigration  in  the  North  and 
East,  our  murder  rate  should  exceed  those  of  the 
continental  nations,  which  are  nothing  if  not  well 
policed. 

But  of  one  thing  we  can  be  abundantly  certain 
without  any  figures  at  all,  and  that  is  that  our  pres- 
ent method  of  administering  justice  (less  the  actions 
of  juries  than  of  judges) — the  system  taken  as  a 
whole — offers  no  deterrent  to  the  embryonic  or  pro- 
fessional criminal.  The  administration  of  justice  to- 
day is  not  the  swift  judgment  of  honest  men  upon 
a  criminal  act,  but  a  clever  game  between  judge  and 
lawyer,  in  which  the  action  of  the  jury  is  discounted 
entirely  and  the  moves  are  made  with  a  view  to  check- 
mating justice,  not  in  the  trial  courtroom,  but  before 
the  appellate  tribunal  two  or  three  years  later. 

"My  young  feller,"  said  a  grizzled  veteran  of  the 
criminal  bar  to  me  long  years  ago,  after  our  jury  had 
gone  out,  "there's  lots  of  things  in  this  game  you 


WHY  DO  MEN  KILL  ?  85 

ain't  got  on  to  yet.  Do  you  think  I  care  what  this 
jury  does?  Not  one  mite.  I  got  a  nice  little  error 
into  the  case  the  very  first  day — and  I've  set  back 
ever  since.  S'pose  we  are  convicted?  I'll  get  Jim 
here  [the  prisoner]  out  on  a  certificate  and  it'll  be 
two  years  before  the  Court  of  Appeals  will  get  around 
to  the  case.  Meantime  Jim'll  be  out  makin'  money 
to  pay  me  my  fee — won't  you,  Jim?  Then  your  wit- 
nesses will  be  gone,  and  nobody'll  remember  what 
on  earth  it's  all  about.  You'll  be  down  in  Wall  Street 
practicing  real  law  yourself,  and  the  indictment  will 
kick  around  the  office  for  a  year  or  so,  all  covered 
with  dust,  and  then  some  day  I'll  get  a  friend  of  mine 
to  come  in  quietly  and  move  to  dismiss.  And  it'll 
be  dismissed.  Don't  you  worry!  Why,  a  thousand 
other  murders  will  have  been  committed  in  this 
county  by  the  time  that  happens.  Bless  your  soul! 
You  can't  go  on  tryin'  the  same  man  forever!  Give 
the  other  fellers  a  chance.  You  shake  your  head? 
Well,  it's  a  fact.  I've  been  doin'  it  for  forty  years. 
You'll  see."  And  I  did.  That  may  not  be  why  men 
kill,  but  perhaps  indirectly  it  may  have  something  to 
do  with  it. 


CHAPTER  V 
DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

A  DETECTIVE,  according  to  the  dictionaries,  is  one 
"whose  occupation  it  is  to  discover  matters^ as  to 
which  information  is  desired,  particularly  wrong- 
doers, and  to  obtain  evidence  to  be  used  against 
them."  A  private  detective,  by  the  same  authority, 
is  one  "engaged  unofficially  in  obtaining  secret  in- 
formation for  or  guarding  the  private  interests  of 
those  who  employ  him."  The  definition  emphasizes 
the  official  character  of  detectives  in  general  as  con- 
trasted with  those  whose  services  may  be  enlisted 
for  hire  by  the  individual  citizen,  but  the  distinction 
is  of  little  importance,  since  it  is  based  arbitrarily 
upon  the  character  of  the  employer  (whether  the 
State  or  a  private  client)  instead  of  upon  the  nature 
of  the  employment  itself,  which  is  the  only  thing 
which  is  likely  to  interest  us  about  detectives  at  all. 

The  sanctified  tradition  that  a  detective  was  an 
agile  person  with  a  variety  of  side-whiskers  no  longer 
obtains  even  in  light  literature,  and  the  most  imagina- 
tive of  us  is  frankly  aware  of  the  fact  that  a  detec- 
tive is  just  a  common  man  earning  (or  pretending 
to  earn)  a  common  living  by  common  and  obvious 
means.  Yet  hi  spite  of  ourselves  we  are  accustomed 
to  attribute  superhuman  acuteness  and  a  lightning- 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS  87 

like  rapidity  of  intellect  to  this  vague  and  romantic 
class  of  fellow-citizens.  The  ordinary  work  of  a  de- 
tective, however,  requires  neither  of  these  qualities. 
Honesty  and  obedience  are  his  chief  requirements, 
and  if  he  have  intelligence  as  well,  so  much  the 
better,  provided  it  be  of  the  variety  known  as  horse 
sense.  A  genuine  candidate  for  the  job  of  Sherlock 
Holmes  would  find  little  competition.  In  the  first 
place,  the  usual  work  of  a  detective  does  not  demand 
any  extraordinary  powers  of  deduction  at  all. 

Leaving  out  of  consideration  those  who  are  merely 
private  policemen  (often  in  uniform),  and  principally 
engaged  in  patrolling  residential  streets,  preserving 
order  at  fairs,  race-tracks,  and  political  meetings,  or 
in  breaking  strikes  and  preventing  riots,  the  largest 
part  of  the  work  for  which  detectives  are  employed 
is  not  in  the  detection  of  crime  and  criminals,  but  in 
simply  watching  people,  following  them,  and  report- 
ing as  accurately  as  possible  their  movements.  These 
functions  are  known  in  the  vernacular  as  spotting, 
locating,  and  trailing.  It  requires  patience,  some 
powers  of  observation,  and  occasionally  a  little  inge- 
nuity. The  real  detective  under  such  circumstances 
is  the  man  to  whom  they  hand  in  their  reports.  Yet 
much  of  the  most  dramatic  and  valuable  work  that  is 
done  involves  no  acuteness  at  all,  but  simply  a  will- 
ingness to  act  as  a  spy  and  to  brave  the  dangers  of 
being  found  out. 

There  is  nothing  more  thrilling  in  the  pages  of 
modern  history  than  the  story  of  the  man  (James 
McPartland)  who  uncovered  the  conspiracies  of  the 


88  DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

Molly  McGuires.  But  the  work  of  this  man  was 
that  of  a  spy  pure  and  simple. 

Another  highly  specialized  class  of  detectives  is 
that  engaged  in  police  and  banking  work,  who  by  ex- 
perience (or  even  origin)  have  a  wide  and  intimate 
acquaintance  with  criminals  of  various  sorts;  and  by 
their  familiarity  with  the  latters'  whereabouts,  asso- 
ciates, work,  and  methods  are  able  to  recognize  and 
run  down  the  perpetrators  of  particular  crimes. 

Thus,  for  example,  there  are  men  in  the  detective 
bureau  of  New  York  City  who  know  by  name,  and 
perhaps  have  a  speaking  acquaintance  with,  a  large 
number  of  the  pick-pockets  and  burglars  of  the  East 
Side.  They  know  their  haunts  and  their  ties  of  friend- 
ship or  marriage.  When  any  particular  job  is  pulled 
off  they  have  a  pretty  shrewd  idea  of  who  is  responsi- 
ble for  it  and  lay  their  plans  accordingly.  If  neces- 
sary, they  run  in  the  whole  bunch  and  put  each  of 
them  through  a  course  of  interrogation,  accusation, 
and  brow-beating  until  some  one  breaks  down  or 
makes  a  slip  that  involves  him  in  a  tangle.  These 
men  are  special  policemen  whose  knowledge  makes 
them  detectives  by  courtesy.  But  their  work  does 
not  involve  any  particular  superiority  or  quickness  of 
intellect — the  quality  which  we  are  wont  to  associate 
with  the  detection  of  crime. 

Now,  if  the  ordinary  householder  finds  that  his 
wife's  necklace  has  mysteriously  disappeared,  his 
first  impulse  is  to  send  for  a  detective  of  some  sort 
or  other.  In  general,  he  might  just  as  well  send  for 
his  mother-in-law.  Of  course,  the  police  can  and  will 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS  89 

watch  the  pawnshops  for  the  missing  baubles,  but 
no  crook  who  is  not  a  fool  is  going  to  pawn  a  whole 
necklace  on  the  Bowery  the  very  next  day  after  it 
has  been  "lifted."  Or  he  can  enlist  a  private  detec- 
tive who  will  question  the  servants  and  perhaps  go 
through  their  trunks,  if  they  will  let  him.  Either 
sort  will  probably  line  up  the  inmates  of  the  house 
for  general  scrutiny  and  try  to  bully  them  separately 
into  a  confession.  This  may  save  the  master  a  dis- 
agreeable experience,  but  it  is  the  simplest  sort  of 
police  work  and  is  done  vicariously  for  the  taxpayer, 
just  as  the  public  garbage  man  relieves  you  from  the 
burden  of  taking  out  the  ashes  yourself,  because  he  is 
paid  for  it,  not  on  account  of  your  own  incapacity  or 
his  superiority.  Which,  speaking  of  garbage,  reminds 
the  writer  of  a  disconnected  personal  experience  in 
which  he  endeavored  to  enlist  the  services  of  one  of 
these  latter  specialists  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  a 
trunk  on  his  wagon  to  the  steamboat  wharf. 

"I'm  sorry,  sir,"  replied  the  gentleman  in  question, 
"I  ain't  used  to  handling  trunks.  They  ain't  in  my 
line.  But  [proudly]  when  it  comes  to  swill,  I'm  as  good 
as  anybody  /" 

The  real  detective  is  the  one  who,  taking  up  the 
solution  of  a  crime  or  other  mystery,  brings  to  bear 
upon  it  unusual  powers  of  observation  and  deduction 
and  an  exceptional  resourcefulness  in  acting  upon 
his  conclusions.  Frankly,  I  have  known  very  few 
such,  although  for  some  ten  years  I  have  made  use  of 
a  large  number  of  so-called  detectives  in  both  public 
and  private  matters.  As  I  recall  the  long  line  of  cases 


90  DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

where  these  men  have  rendered  service  of  great  value, 
almost  every  one  resolves  itself  into  a  successful 
piece  of  mere  spying  or  trailing.  Little  ingenuity  or 
powers  of  reason  were  required.  Of  course,  there  are 
a  thousand  tricks  that  an  experienced  man  acquires 
as  a  matter  of  course,  but  which  at  first  sight  seem 
almost  like  inspiration.  I  shall  not  forget  my  delight 
when  Jesse  Blocher,  who  had  been  trailing  Charles 
Foster  Dodge  through  the  South  (when  the  latter 
was  wanted  as  the  chief  witness  against  Abe  Hummel 
on  the  charge  of  subornation  of  perjury  of  which  he 
was  finally  convicted),  told  me  how  he  instantly  lo- 
cated his  man,  without  disclosing  his  own  identity,  by 
unostentatiously  leaving  a  note  addressed  to  Dodge 
in  a  bright-red  envelope  upon  the  office  counter  of  the 
Hotel  St.  Charles  in  New  Orleans,  where  he  knew  his 
quarry  to  be  staying.  A  few  moments  later  the  clerk 
saw  it,  picked  it  up,  and,  as  a  matter  of  course,  thrust 
it  promptly  into  box  No.  420,  thus  involuntarily 
hanging,  as  it  were,  a  red  lantern  on  Dodge's  door. 

There  is  no  more  reason  to  look  for  superiority  of 
intelligence  or  mental  alertness  among  detectives  of 
the  ordinary  class  than  there  is  to  expect  it  from 
clerks,  stationary  engineers,  plumbers,  or  firemen. 
While  comparisons  are  invidious,  I  should  be  inclined 
to  say  that  the  ordinary  chauffeur  was  probably  a 
brighter  man  than  the  average  detective.  This  is  not 
to  be  taken  in  derogation  of  the  latter,  but  as  a  com- 
pliment to  the  former.  There  is  more  reason  why  he 
should  be.  There  are  a  great  many  detectives  of  am- 
biguous training.  I  remember  in  a  celebrated  case 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS  91 

discovering  that  of  the  more  important  detectives  em- 
ployed by  a  well-known  private  Anti-Criminal  Society 
in  New  York,  one  had  been  a  street  vender  of  frank- 
furters (otherwise  yclept  "hot  dogs");  and  another 
the  keeper  of  a  bird  store,  which  last  perhaps  qualified 
him  for  the  pursuit  and  capture  of  human  game. 
There  is  a  popular  fiction  that  lawyers  are  shrewd  and 
capable,  similar  to  the  prevailing  one  that  detectives 
are  astute  and  cunning  in  their  methods.  But,  as 
the  head  of  one  of  the  biggest  agencies  in  the  country 
remarked  to  me  the  other  day,  when  discussing  the 
desirability  of  retaining  local  counsel  in  a  distant 
city:  "By  thunder!  You  know  how  hard  it  is  to  find 
a  lawyer  that  isn't  a  dead  one."  I  feel  confident  that 
he  did  not  mean  this  in  the  sense  that  there  was  no 
good  lawyer  except  a  dead  lawyer.  What  my  detec- 
tive friend  probably  had  in  mind  was  that  it  was  diffi- 
cult to  find  a  lawyer  who  brought  to  bear  on  a  new 
problem  any  originality  of  thought  or  action.  It  is 
even  harder  to  find  a  detective  who  is  not  in  this 
sense  a  dead  one.  I  have  the  feeling,  being  a  lawyer 
myself,  that  (for  educational  reasons  probably)  it  is 
harder  to  find  a  live  detective  than  a  live  lawyer. 
There  are  a  few  of  both,  however,  if  you  know  where 
to  look  for  them.  But  it  is  easy  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  the  Philistines. 

The  fundamental  reason  why  it  is  so  hard  to  form 
any  just  opinion  of  detectives  in  general  is  that  (ex- 
cept by  their  fruits)  there  is  little  opportunity  to  dis- 
criminate between  the  able  and  the  incapable.  Now, 
the  more  difficult  and  complicated  his  task  the  less 


92  DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

likely  is  the  sleuth  (honest  or  otherwise)  to  succeed. 
The  chances  are  a  good  deal  more  than  even  that 
he  will  never  solve  the  mystery  for  which  he  is  en- 
gaged. Thus  at  the  end  of  three  months  you  will 
have  only  his  reports  and  his  bill — which  are  poor 
comfort,  to  say  the  least.  And  yet  he  may  have  really 
worked  eighteen  hours  per  day  in  your  service.  But 
a  dishonest  detective  has  only  to  disappear  (and  take 
his  ease  for  the  same  period)  and  send  you  his  reports 
and  his  bill — and  you  will  have  only  his  word  for 
how  much  work  he  has  done  and  how  much  money 
he  has  spent.  You  are  absolutely  in  his  power — 
unless  you  hire  another  detective  to  watch  him.  Con- 
sequently there  is  no  class  in  the  world  where  the 
temptation  to  dishonesty  is  greater  than  among  de- 
tectives— not  even  among  plumbers,  cabmen,  butch- 
ers, and  lawyers.  (God  knows  the  peril  of  all  of 
these!)  This,  too,  is,  I  fancy,  the  reason  that  the 
evidence  of  the  police  detective  is  received  with  so 
much  suspicion  by  jurymen — they  know  that  the 
only  way  for  him  to  retain  his  position  is  by  mak- 
ing a  record  and  getting  convictions,  and  hence 
they  are  always  looking  for  jobs  and  frame-ups. 
If  a  police  detective  doesn't  make  arrests  and  send 
a  man  to  jail  every  once  in  a  while  there  is  no  con- 
clusive way  for  his  superiors  to  be  sure  he  isn't 
loafing. 

There  are  a  very  large  number  of  persons  who  go 
into  the  detective  business  for  the  same  reason  that 
others  enter  the  ministry — they  can't  make  a  living 
at  anything  else.  Provided  he  has  squint  eyes  and 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS  93 

a  dark  complexion,  almost  anybody  feels  that  he  is 
qualified  to  unravel  the  tangled  threads  of  crime. 
The  first  resource  of  the  superannuated  or  discharged 
police  detective  is  to  start  an  agency.  Of  course,  he 
may  be  first  class  in  spite  of  these  disqualifications, 
but  the  presumption  in  the  first  instance  is  that  he 
is  no  longer  alert  or  effective,  and  in  the  second  that 
in  one  way  or  another  he  is  not  honest.  Agencies  re- 
cruited from  deposed  and  other  ex-policemen  usually 
have  all  the  faults  of  the  police  without  any  of  their 
virtues.  There  are  many  small  agencies  which  do 
reliable  work,  and  there  are  a  number  of  private  de- 
tectives in  all  the  big  cities  who  work  single-handed 
and  achieve  excellent  results.  However,  if  he  expects 
to  accomplish  anything  by  hiring  detectives,  the  lay- 
man or  lawyer  must  first  make  sure  of  his  agency  or 
his  man. 

One  other  feature  of  the  detective  business  should 
not  be  overlooked.  In  addition  to  charging  for  ser- 
vices not  actually  rendered  and  expenses  not  actu- 
ally incurred,  there  is  in  many  cases  a  strong  temp- 
tation to  betray  the  interests  of  the  employer.  A 
private  detective  may,  and  usually  does,  become  pos- 
sessed of  information  even  more  valuable  to  the  per- 
son who  is  being  watched  than  to  the  person  to  whom 
he  owes  his  allegiance.  Unreliable  rascals  constantly 
sell  out  to  the  other  side  and  play  both  ends  against 
the  middle.  In  this  they  resemble  some  of  the  fa- 
mous diplomatic  agents  of  history.  And  police  de- 
tectives employed  to  run  down  criminals  and  protect 
society  have  been  known  instead  to  act  as  stalls  for 


94  DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

bank  burglars  and  (for  a  consideration)  to  assist 
them  to  dispose  of  their  booty  and  protect  them  from 
arrest  and  capture.  It  has  repeatedly  happened  that 
reliable  private  detectives  have  discovered  that  the 
police  employed  upon  the  same  case  have  in  reality 
been  tipping  off  the  criminals  as  to  what  was  being 
done  and  coaching  them  as  to  their  conduct.  Of 
course  the  natural  jealousy  existing  between  official 
and  unofficial  agents  of  the  law  leads  to  a  good  many 
unfounded  accusations  of  this  character,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  fact  that  much  of  the  most  effective 
police  work  is  done  by  employing  professional  crimi- 
nals to  secure  information  and  act  as  stool-pigeons 
often  results  in  a  definite  understanding  that  the 
latter  shall  be  themselves  protected  in  the  quiet  en- 
joyment of  their  labors.  The  relations  of  the  regular 
police  to  crime,  however,  and  the  general  subject  of 
police  graft  have  little  place  in  a  chapter  of  this  char- 
acter. 

The  first  question  that  usually  arises  is  whether  a 
detective  shall  or  shall  not  be  employed  at  all  in  any 
particular  case.  Usually  the  most  important  thing 
is  to  find  out  what  the  real  character,  past,  and  asso- 
ciations of  some  particular  individual  may  be.  Well- 
established  detective  agencies  with  offices  throughout 
the  country  are  naturally  hi  a  better  position  to  ac- 
quire such  information  quickly  than  the  private  in- 
dividual or  lawyer,  since  they  are  on  the  spot  and 
have  an  organized  staff  containing  the  right  sort  of 
men  for  the  work.  If  the  information  lies  in  your 
own  city  you  can  probably  hire  some  one  to  get  it  or 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS  95 

ferret  it  out  yourself  quite  as  well,  and  much  more 
cheaply,  than  by  employing  their  services.  The  leads 
are  few  and  generally  simple.  The  subject's  past 
employers  and  business  associates,  his  landlords  and 
landladies,  his  friends  and  enemies,  and  his  milkman 
must  be  run  down  and  interrogated.  Perhaps  his 
personal  movements  must  be  watched.  Any  intelli- 
gent fellow  who  is  out  of  a  job  will  do  this  for  you 
for  about  $5  per  day  and  expenses.  The  agencies 
usually  charge  from  $6  to  $8  (and  up),  and  prefer 
two  men  to  one,  as  a  matter  of  convenience  and  to 
make  sure  that  the  subject  is  fully  covered.  If  the 
suspect  is  on  the  move  and  trains  or  steamships  must 
be  met,  you  have  practically  no  choice  but  to  employ 
a  national  agency.  It  alone  has  the  proper  plant 
and  equipment  for  the  work.  In  an  emergency,  or- 
ganization counts  more  than  anything  else.  Where 
time  is  of  the  essence,  the  individual  has  no  oppor- 
tunity to  hire  his  own  men  or  start  an  organization 
of  his  own.  But  if  the  matter  is  one  where  there  is 
plenty  of  leisure  to  act,  you  can  usually  do  your  own 
detective  work  better  and  cheaper  than  any  one  else. 
Regarding  the  work  of  the  detective  as  a  spy 
(which  probably  constitutes  seventy-five  per  cent  of 
his  employment  to-day),  few  persons  realize  how 
widely  such  services  are  being  utilized.  The  insig- 
nificant old  Irishwoman  who  stumbles  against  you 
in  the  department  store  is  possibly  watching  with 
her  cloudy  but  eagle  eye  for  shoplifters.  The  tired- 
looking  man  on  the  street-car  may,  in  fact,  be  a  pro- 
fessional "spotter."  The  stout  youth  with  the  pince 


96  DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

nez  who  is  examining  the  wedding  presents  is  perhaps 
a  central-office  man.  All  this  you  know  or  may  sus- 
pect. But  you  are  not  so  likely  to  be  aware  that  the 
floor-walker  himself  is  the  agent  of  a  rival  concern 
placed  in  the  department  store  to  keep  track,  not 
only  of  prices  but  of  whether  or  not  the  wholesalers 
are  living  up  to  their  agreements  in  regard  to  the  fur- 
nishing of  particular  kinds  of  goods  only  to  one 
house;  or  that  the  conductor  on  the  car  is  a  paid  de- 
tective of  the  company,  whose  principal  duty  is  not 
to  collect  fares,  but  to  report  the  doings  of  the  unions; 
or  that  the  gentleman  who  is  accidentally  introduced 
to  you  at  the  wedding  breakfast  is  employed  by  a 
board  of  directors  to  get  a  line  on  your  host's  business 
associates  and  social  companions. 

In  the  great  struggle  between  capital  and  labor, 
each  side  has  expended  large  sums  of  money  in  em- 
ploying confederates  to  secure  secret  information  as 
to  the  plans  and  doings  of  the  enemy.  Almost  every 
labor  union  has  its  Judas,  and  many  a  secretary  to  a 
capitalist  is  in  the  secret  employment  of  a  labor  union. 
The  railroads  must  be  kept  informed  of  what  is  going 
on;  and,  if  necessary,  they  import  a  man  from  another 
part  of  the  country  to  join  the  local  organization. 
Often  such  men,  on  account  of  their  force  and  intelli- 
gence, are  elected  to  high  office  in  the  brotherhoods 
whose  secrets  they  are  hired  to  betray.  Practically 
every  big  manufacturing  plant  in  the  United  States 
has  on  its  pay-rolls  men  acting  as  engineers,  foremen, 
or  laborers  who  are  drawing  from  $80  to  $100  per 
month  as  detectives  either  (1)  to  keep  their  employers 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS  97 

informed  as  to  the  workings  of  the  labor  unions,  (2) 
to  report  to  the  directors  the  actual  conduct  of  the 
business  by  its  salaried  officers,  superintendents,  and 
overseers,  or  (3)  to  ascertain  and  report  to  outside 
competing  concerns  the  methods  and  processes  made 
use  of,  the  materials  utilized,  and  the  exact  cost  of 
production. 

There  are  detectives  among  the  chambermaids  and 
bellboys  in  the  hotels,  and  also  among  the  guests; 
there  are  detectives  on  the  passenger  lists  and  in  the 
cardrooms  of  the  Atlantic  liners;  the  colored  porter 
on  the  private  car,  the  butler  at  your  friend's  house, 
the  chorus  girl  on  Broadway,  the  clerk  in  the  law 
office,  the  employee  in  the  commercial  agency,  may 
all  be  drawing  pay  in  the  interest  of  some  one  else, 
who  may  be  either  a  transportation  company,  a 
stock-broker,  a  rival  financier,  a  yellow  newspaper, 
an  injured  or  even  an  erring  wife,  a  grievance  com- 
mittee, or  a  competing  concern;  and  the  duties  of 
these  persons  may  and  will  range  from  the  theft  of 
mailing-lists,  books,  and  papers,  and  (in  the  case  of 
the  newspaper)  of  private  letters,  up  to  genuine  de- 
tective work  requiring  some  real  ability. 

Apart  from  the  hired  thieves  above  referred  to, 
some  yellow  journals  employ  men  to  work  upon  the 
various  "mystery  stories"  that  from  time  to  time 
arouse  the  attention  of  the  public,  who  often  ac- 
complish as  good  results  as  the  police.  I  should, 
however,  place  one  limitation  upon  this  general 
statement,  which  is  that,  as  the  object  of  the  news- 
paper is  usually  quite  as  much  to  keep  the  story 


98  DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

alive  as  to  solve  the  mystery,  the  papers  are  apt  to 
find  startling  significance  in  details  of  slight  impor- 
tance. While  we  are  speaking  of  newspapers,  it 
may  not  be  out  of  place  to  suggest  that  their  activ- 
ity is  such  that  there  are  few  general  evils  left  un- 
disclosed and  few  prominent  men  the  privacy  of 
whose  lives  is  not  known  in  the  editorial  rooms. 
When  lurid  tales  are  told  of  the  secret  doings  of  Mr. 
So  and  So  and  the  Hon.  This  and  That,  you  may  rest 
assured  that  the  greater  the  desirability  of  those  yarns 
as  copy  for  the  big  dailies,  the  less  likely  they  are  to 
have  any  foundation  hi  fact.  The  eye  of  the  city 
editor  is  in  every  place  discerning  the  evil  if  not  the 
good.  Indeed,  it  is  almost  unnecessary  for  the  papers 
to  hire  spies,  since  self -constituted  ones  are  ready  at 
any  moment  to  bargain  with  them  for  stolen  goods 
and  ruined  reputations. 

Detective  work  of  the  sort  which  involves  the  be- 
trayal of  confidences  and  friendships  naturally  ex- 
cites our  aversion — yet  in  many  cases  the  end  un- 
doubtedly justifies  the  means  employed,  and  often 
there  is  no  other  way  to  avert  disaster  and  prevent 
fiendish  crimes.  Sometimes,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
information  sought  is  purely  for  mercenary  or  even 
less  worthy  reasons,  and  those  engaged  in  these  under- 
takings range  from  rascals  of  the  lowest  type  to  men 
who  are  ready  to  risk  death  for  the  cause  which  they 
represent  and  who  are  really  heroes  of  a  high  order. 
One  of  the  latter  with  whom  I  happened  to  be  thrown 
professionally  was  a  young  fellow  of  about  twenty 
named  Guthrie. 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS  99 

It  was  during  a  great  strike,  and  outrages  were 
being  committed  all  over  the  city  of  New^York  by 
dynamiters  supposed  to  be  in  the  employ  of  the 
unions.  Young  Guthrie,  who  was  a  reckless  dare- 
devil, offered  his  services  to  the  employers,  and  agreed 
(for  a  trifling  compensation)  to  join  one  of  the  local 
unions  and  try  to  find  out  who  were  the  men  blowing 
up  office  buildings  in  process  of  construction  and 
otherwise  terrorizing  the  inhabitants  of  the  city.  The 
story  of  his  success  deserves  a  chapter  by  itself,  and 
it  is  enough  here  to  state  that  he  applied  for  member- 
ship in  the  organization,  and  by  giving  evidence  of 
his  courage  and  fiber  managed  to  secure  a  place  as  a 
volunteer  in  the  dynamiting  squad.  So  cleverly  did 
he  pass  himself  off  as  a  bitter  enemy  of  capital  that 
he  was  entrusted  with  secrets  of  the  utmost  value  and 
took  part  in  making  the  plans  and  procuring  the 
dynamite  to  execute  them.  The  quality  of  his  nerve 
(as  well  as  his  foolhardiness)  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  he  once  carried  a  dress-suit  case  full  of  the  ex- 
plosive around  the  city,  jumping  on  and  off  street 
cars,  and  dodging  vehicles.  When  the  proper  mo- 
ment came  and  the  dynamite  had  been  placed  in 
an  uncompleted  building  on  Twenty-second  Street, 
Guthrie  gave  the  signal  and  the  police  arrested  the 
dynamiters — all  of  them,  including  Guthrie,  who  was 
placed  with  the  rest  in  a  cell  in  the  Tombs  and  con- 
tinued to  report  to  the  district  attorney  all  the  in- 
formation which  he  thus  secured  from  his  unsuspect- 
ing associates.  Indeed,  it  was  hard  to  convince  the 
authorities  that  Guthrie  was  a  spy  and  not  a  mere 


100          DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

accomplice  who  had  turned  State's  evidence,  a  dis- 
tinction of  far-reaching  legal  significance  so  far  as 
his  evidence  was  concerned. 

The  final  episode  in  the  drama  was  the  unearthing 
by  the  police  of  Hoboken  of  the  secret  cache  of  the 
dynamiters,  containing  a  large  quantity  of  the  ex- 
plosive. Guthrie's  instructions  as  to  how  they  should 
find  it  read  like  a  page  from  Poe's  "Gold  Bug." 
You  had  to  go  at  night  to  a  place  where  a  lonely  road 
crossed  the  Erie  Railroad  tracks  in  the  Hackensack 
meadows,  and  mark  the  spot  where  the  shadow  of  a 
telegraph  pole  (cast  by  an  arc  light)  fell  on  a  stone 
wall.'  .This  you  must  climb  and  walk  so  many  paces 
north,  turn  and  go  so  many  feet  west,  and  then  north 
again.  You  then  came  to  a  white  stone,  from  which 
you  laid  your  course  through  more  latitude  and  longi- 
tude until  you  were  right  over  the  spot.  The  police 
of  Hoboken  did  as  directed,  and  after  tacking  round 
and  round  the  field,  found  the  dynamite.  Of  course, 
the  union  said  the  whole  thing  was  a  plant,  and  that 
Guthrie  had  put  the  dynamite  in  the  field  himself  at 
the  instigation  of  his  employers,  but  before  the  case 
came  to  trial  both  dynamiters  pleaded  guilty  and 
went  to  Sing  Sing.  One  of  them  turned  out  to  be  an 
ex-convict,  a  burglar.  I  often  wonder  where  Guthrie 
is  now.  He  certainly  cared  little  for  his  life.  Per- 
haps he  is  down  in  Venezeula  or  Mexico.  He  could 
never  be  aught  than  a  soldier  of  fortune.  But  for  a 
long  time  the  employers  thought  that  Guthrie  was 
a  detective  sent  by  the  unions  to  compromise  them 
in  the  very  dynamiting  they  were  trying  to  stop! 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS          101 

I  once  had  a  particularly  dangerous  and  unfor- 
tunate case  where  a  private  client  was  being  bk2k- 
mailed  by  a  half-crazy  ruffian  who  had  never  seen 
him,  but  had  selected  him  arbitrarily  -  as\  a>  person 
likely  to  give  up  money.  The  blackmailer  was  a  Ger- 
man Socialist,  who  was  out  of  employment — a  man 
of  desperate  character.  He  had  made  up  his  mind 
that  the  world  owed  him  a  living,  and  he  had  decided 
that  the  easiest  way  to  get  it  was  to  make  some 
more  prosperous  person  give  him  a  thousand  dollars 
under  threat  of  being  exposed  as  an  enemy  of  society. 

The  charge  was  so  absurd  as  to  be  almost  ludicrous, 
but  had  my  client  caused  the  blackmailer's  arrest 
the  matter  would  have  been  the  subject  of  endless 
newspaper  notoriety  and  comment.  It  was  therefore 
thought  wise  to  make  use  of  other  means,  and  I  pro- 
cured the  assistance  of  a  young  German-American 
of  my  acquaintance,  who,  in  the  guise  of  a  vaudeville 
artist  seeking  a  job,  went  to  the  blackmailer's  board- 
ing-house and  pretended  to  be  looking  for  an  actor 
friend  with  a  name  not  unlike  that  of  the  criminal. 

After  two  or  three  visits  he  managed  to  scrape 
an  acquaintance  with  the  blackmailer  and  thereafter 
spent  much  time  with  him.  Both  were  out  of  work, 
both  were  Germans,  and  both  liked  beer.  My  friend 
had  just  enough  money  to  satisfy  this  latter  craving. 
In  a  month  or  so  they  were  intimate  friends  and  used 
to  go  fishing  together  down  the  bay.  At  last,  after 
many  months,  the  criminal  disclosed  to  the  detective 
his  plan  of  blackmailing  my  client,  and  suggested 
that  as  two  heads  were  better  than  one  they  had 


102          DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

better  make  it  a  joint  venture.  The  detective  pre- 
tended to.  balk  at  the  idea  at  first,  but  was  finally 
persuaded,  and  at  the  other's  request  undertook  the 
delivery;  of-.  4;he  blackmailing  letters  to  my  client! 
Inside  of  three  weeks  he  had  in  his  possession  enough 
evidence  in  the  criminars  own  handwriting  to  send 
him  to  prison  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  When  at  last 
the  detective  disclosed  his  identity  the  blackmailer 
at  first  refused  to  believe  him,  and  then  literally 
rolled  on  the  floor  in  his  agony  and  fear  at  discovering 
how  he  had  been  hoodwinked.  The  next  day  he  dis- 
appeared and  has  not  been  heard  of  since,  but  his 
letters  are  in  my  vault,  ready  to  be  used  if  he  again 
puts  in  an  appearance. 

The  records  of  the  police  and  of  the  private  agen- 
cies contain  many  instances  where  murderers  have 
confessed  their  guilt  long  after  the  crime  to  supposed 
friends,  who  were  in  reality  decoys  placed  there  for 
that  very  purpose.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of  criminals 
that  they  cannot  keep  their  secrets  locked  in  their 
own  breasts.  The  impulse  to  confession  is  universal, 
particularly  in  women.  Egotism  has  some  part  in 
this,  but  the  chief  element  is  the  desire  for  compan- 
ionship. Criminals  have  a  horror  of  dying  under  an 
alias.  The  dignity  of  identity  appeals  even  to  the 
tramp.  This  impulse  leads  oftentimes  to  the  most 
unnecessary  and  suicidal  disclosures.  The  murderer 
who  has  planned  and  executed  a  diabolical  homicide 
and  who  has  retired  to  obscurity  and  safety  will  very 
likely  in  course  of  time  make  a  clean  breast  of  it  to 
some  one  whom  he  believes  to  be  his  friend.  He 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS          103 

wants  to  "get  it  off  his  chest,"  to  talk  it  over,  to  dis- 
cuss its  fine  points,  to  boast  of  how  clever  he  was,  to 
ask  for  unnecessary  advice  about  his  conduct  in  the 
future,  to  have  at  least  one  other  person  in  the  world 
who  has  seen  his  soul's  nakedness. 

The  interesting  feature  of  such  confessions  from 
a  legal  point  of  view  is  that,  no  matter  how  circum- 
stantial they  may  be,  they  are  not  usually  of  them- 
selves sufficient  under  our  law  to  warrant  a  convic- 
tion. The  admission  or  confession  of  a  defendant 
needs  legal  corroboration.  This  corroboration  is 
often  very  difficult  to  find,  and  frequently  cannot  be 
secured  at  all.  This  provision  of  the  statutes  is 
doubtless  a  wise  one  to  prevent  hysterical,  suicidal, 
egotistical,  and  semi-insane  persons  from  meeting 
death  in  the  electric  chair  or  on  the  gallows,  but  it 
often  results  in  the  guilty  going  unpunished.  Per- 
sonally, I  have  never  known  a  criminal  to  confess 
a  crime  of  which  he  was  innocent.  The  nearest  thing 
to  it  in  my  experience  is  when  one  criminal,  jointly 
guilty  with  another  and  sure  of  conviction,  has  drawn 
lots  with  his  pal,  lost,  confessed,  and  in  the  confes- 
sion exculpated  his  companion. 

In  the  police  organization  of  almost  every  large 
city  there  are  a  few  men  who  are  genuinely  gifted 
for  the  work  of  detection.  Such  an  one  was  Petrosino, 
a  great  detective,  and  an  honest,  unselfish,  and  heroic 
man,  who  united  indefatigable  patience  and  industry 
with  reasoning  powers  of  a  high  order.  The  most 
thrilling  evening  of  my  life  was  when  my  wife  and 
I  listened  before  a  crackling  fire  in  my  library  to 


104          DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

Joe's  story  of  the  Van  Cortlandt  Park  murder,  the 
night  before  I  was  going  to  prosecute  the  case.  Sit- 
ting stiffly  in  an  arm-chair,  his  great,  ugly  moon-face 
expressionless  save  for  an  occasional  flash  from  his 
black  eyes,  Petrosino  recounted  slowly  and  ac- 
curately how,  by  means  of  a  single  slip  of  paper  bear- 
ing the  penciled  name  "Sabbatto  Gizzi,  P.  0.  Box 
239,  Lambertville,  N.  J.,"  he  had  run  down  the  un- 
known murderer  of  an  unknown  Italian  stabbed  to 
death  in  the  park's  shrubbery.  The  paper  contained 
neither  the  name  of  the  criminal  nor  his  victim, 
but  by  means  of  this  slender  clue  he  had  gone  to 
Lambertville  and  found  an  Italian  who  had  identi- 
fied the  deceased  as  a  man  who  had  left  Lambert- 
ville for  New  York  in  the  company  of  another  Italian 
named  Strollo.  Petrosino  interviewed  Strollo,  who 
admitted  the  trip  but  denied  any  knowledge  of  his 
companion's  death.  He  had,  he  said,  turned  him 
over  to  his  brother,  for  whom  Strollo  had  been 
searching. 

In  Strollo's  pocket  Petrosino  found  a  letter  to  the 
brother  from  Tony  Torsielli,  the  murdered  man.  It 
was  in  Strollo's  own  handwriting  and  enclosed  in  an 
envelope  addressed  to  Torsielli  himself  at  Lambert- 
ville. This  envelope  bore  a  red  two-cent  stamp.  On 
the  basis  of  this  letter,  aided  by  Strollo's  contradic- 
tory statements,  Petrosino  reconstructed  the  murder 
and  demonstrated  that  there  was  no  brother,  that 
Strollo  had  invented  him  for  the  purpose  of  luring 
Torsielli  to  New  York,  and  that  he  had  acted  as 
amanuensis  for  Torsielli  and  carried  on  the  corre- 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS          105 

spondence  for  both.  The  envelope  addressed  in 
Strollo 's  handwriting  to  Torsielli  at  Lambertville  was 
the  key  to  the  whole  mystery.  There  was  no  reason 
why  Strollo  should  be  writing  to  his  own  friend  whom 
he  saw  daily  and  who  lived  beside  him  in  the  same 
town.  Neither,  argued  Petrosino,  would  there  be 
any  reason  for  putting  on  a  two-cent  stamp  in  a  place 
so  small  as  to  have  no  mail  delivery.  Ergo,  the  enve- 
lope must  have  been  intended  to  create  the  impression 
that  it  had  been  mailed  from  some  other  place,  by 
another  person — from  whom  but  the  fictitious 
brother?  Bit  by  bit  Petrosino  built  up  a  case  en- 
tirely out  of  circumstantial  evidence  that  demon- 
strated Strollo's  guilt  to  a  mathematical  certainty. 
So  vivid  was  Petrosino's  account  of  his  labors  that 
in  opening  the  case  next  day  to  the  jury  I  had  but  to 
repeat  the  story  I  had  heard  the  night  before.  Strollo 
was  convicted  after  a  week's  trial  before  Judge  0' Gor- 
man in  the  Criminal  Term  of  the  Supreme  Court 
and  paid  the  penalty  of  his  treachery  in  the  electric 
chair.  For  him  I  felt  not  one  pang  of  pity  or  remorse. 
But  during  the  preparation  for  the  case  the  func- 
tion of  the  detective  as  a  decoy  was  demonstrated  in 
a  most  effective  manner.  Strollo  was  confined  in  the 
House  of  Detention  and  a  detective  from  head-quarters 
was  introduced  there  as  an  ostensible  prisoner,  under 
the  name  of  Silvio.  Strollo  and  he  became  great 
friends,  and  when  the  former  was  removed  to  the 
Tombs  the  murderer  wrote  elaborately  to  the  detec- 
tive, requesting  him  to  testify  as  a  witness  at  the  trial 
on  his  behalf  and  instructing  him  what  to  say  in  order 


106          DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

to  establish  an  alibi.  Those  letters  were  the  last  nails 
in  Strollo's  coffin.  After  his  conviction  they  were 
stolen  by  somebody  and  could  not  be  included  in  the 
case  on  appeal,  for  which  reason  the  court  had  some 
doubt  as  to  whether  the  conviction  should  be  affirmed. 
Before  the  Court  of  Appeals  rendered  its  decision, 
however,  I  found,  while  cleaning  out  my  safe,  photo- 
graphs of  the  letters  which  I  had  had  taken  as  a  pre- 
cautionary measure,  but  the  existence  of  which  I 
had  forgotten.  I  now  have  every  important  docu- 
ment that  comes  into  my  hands  as  evidence  photo- 
graphed as  a  matter  of  course. 

Petrosino's  physical  characteristics  were  so  pro- 
nounced that  he  was  probably  as  widely,  if  not  more 
widely,  known  than  any  other  Italian  in  New  York. 
He  was  short  and  heavy,  with  enormous  shoulders 
and  a  bull  neck,  on  which  was  placed  a  great  round 
head  like  a  summer  squash.  His  face  was  pock- 
marked, and  he  talked  with  a  deliberation  that  was 
due  to  his  desire  for  accuracy,  but  which  at  times 
might  have  been  suspected  to  arise  from  some  other 
cause.  He  rarely  smiled  and  went  methodically 
about  his  business,  which  was  to  drive  the  Italian 
criminals  out  of  the  city  and  country.  Of  course, 
being  a  marked  man  in  more  senses  than  one,  it  was 
practically  impossible  to  disguise  himself,  and,  ac- 
cordingly, he  had  to  rely  upon  his  own  investigations 
and  detective  powers,  supplemented  by  the  efforts 
of  the  trained  men  in  the  Italian  branch,  many  of 
whom  are  detectives  of  a  high  order  of  ability.  If 
the  life  of  Petrosino  were  to  be  written,  it  would  be 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS          107 

a  book  unique  in  the  history  of  criminology  and  crime, 
for  this  man  was  probably  the  only  great  detective 
of  the  world  to  find  his  career  in  a  foreign  country 
amid  criminals  of  his  own  race. 

I  have  instanced  Petrosino  as  an  example  of  a 
police  detective  of  a  very  unusual  type,  but  I  have 
known  several  other  men  on  the  New  York  Police 
Force  of  real  genius  in  their  own  particular  lines  of 
work.  One  of  these  is  an  Irishman  who  makes  a  spe- 
cialty of  get-rich-quick  men,  oil  and  mining  stock 
operators,  wire-tappers  and  their  kin,  and  who 
knows  the  antecedents  and  history  of  most  of  them 
better  than  any  other  man  in  the  country.  He  is 
ready  to  take  the  part  of  either  a  "sucker"  or  a  fellow 
crook,  as  the  exigencies  of  the  case  may  demand. 

And  then  there  was  old  Tom  Byrnes,  of  whom 
everybody  knows.  There  are  detectives — real  ones 
— on  the  police  force  of  all  the  great  cities  of  the  world 
to-day,  most  of  them  specialists,  a  few  of  them 
geniuses  capable  of  undertaking  the  ferreting  out  of 
any  sort  of  mystery,  but  the  last  are  rare.  The  police 
detective  usually  lacks  the  training,  education,  and 
social  experience  to  make  him  effective  in  dealing 
with  the  class  of  elite  criminals  who  make  high  society 
their  field.  Yet,  of  course,  it  is  this  class  of  crooks 
who  most  excite  our  interest  and  who  fill  the  pages 
of  popular  detective  fiction. 

The  head-quarters  man  has  no  time  nor  inclination 
to  follow  the  sporting  duchess  and  the  fictitious  earl 
who  accompanies  her  in  their  picturesque  wanderings 
around  the  world.  He  is  busy  inside  the  confines 


108          DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

of  his  own  country.  Parents  or  children  may  dis- 
appear, but  the  mere  seeking  of  oblivion  on  their 
part  is  no  crime  and  does  not  concern  him  except  by 
special  dispensation  on  the  part  of  his  superiors. 
Divorced  couples  may  steal  their  own  children  back 
and  forward,  royalties  may  inadvertently  involve 
themselves  with  undesirables,  governmental  informa- 
tion exude  from  State  portals  in  a  peculiar  manner, 
business  secrets  pass  into  the  hands  of  rivals,  race- 
horses develop  strange  and  untimely  diseases,  hus- 
bands take  long  and  mysterious  trips  from  home — 
a  thousand  exciting  and  worrying  things  may  happen 
to  the  astonishment,  distress,  or  intense  interest  of 
nations,  governments,  political  parties,  or  private  in- 
dividuals, which  from  their  very  nature  are  outside 
the  purview  of  the  regular  police.  Here,  then,  is  the 
field  of  the  secret  agent  or  private  detective,  and  here, 
forsooth,  is  where  the  detective  of  genuine  deductive 
powers  and  the  polished  address  of  the  so-called 
"man  of  the  world"  is  required. 

There  are  two  classes  of  cases  where  a  private  de- 
tective must  needs  be  used,  if  indeed  any  professional 
assistance  is  to  be  called  in:  first,  where  the  person 
whose  identity  is  sought  to  be  discovered  or  whose 
activities  are  sought  to  be  terminated  is  not  a  crim- 
inal or  has  committed  no  crime,  and  second,  where, 
though  a  crime  has  been  committed,  the  injured 
parties  cannot  afford  to  undertake  a  public  prosecu- 
tion. 

For  example,  if  you  are  receiving  anonymous  let- 
ters, the  writer  of  which  accuses  you  of  all  sorts  of 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS          109 

unpleasant  things,  you  would,  of  course,  much  pre- 
fer to  find  out  who  it  is  and  stop  him  quietly  than 
to  turn  over  the  correspondence  to  the  police  and 
let  the  writer's  attorneys  publicly  cross-examine  you 
at  his  trial  as  to  your  past  career.  Even  if  a  diamond 
necklace  is  stolen  from  a  family  living  on  Fifth 
Avenue,  there  is  more  than  an  even  chance  that  the 
owner  will  prefer  to  conceal  her  loss  rather  than  to 
have  her  picture  in  the  morning  paper.  Yet  she  will 
wish  to  find  the  necklace  if  she  can. 

When  the  matter  has  no  criminal  side  at  all,  the 
police  cannot  be  availed  of,  although  we  sometimes 
read  that  the  officers  of  the  local  precinct  have  spent 
many  hours  in  trying  to  locate  Mrs.  So-and-So's 
lost  Pomeranian,  or  in  performing  other  functions 
of  an  essentially  private  nature — most  generously. 
But  if,  for  example,  your  daughter  is  made  the  recipi- 
ent, almost  daily,  of  anonymous  gifts  of  jewelry 
which  arrive  by  mail,  express,  or  messenger,  and  you 
are  anxious  to  discover  the  identity  of  her  admirer 
and  return  them,  you  will  probably  wish  to  engage 
outside  assistance. 

Where  will  you  seek  it?  You  can  do  one  of  two 
things:  go  to  a  big  agency  and  secure  the  services  of 
the  right  mem,  or  engage  such  a  man  outside  who  may 
or  may  not  be  a  professional  detective.  I  have  fre- 
quently utilized  with  success  in  peculiar  and  difficult 
cases  the  services  of  men  whom  I  knew  to  be  common- 
sense  persons,  with  a  natural  taste  for  ferreting  out 
mysteries,  but  who  were  not  detectives  at  all.  Your 
head  book-keeper  may  have  real  talents  in  this  direc- 


110          DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS 

tion — if  he  is  not  above  using  them.  Naturally,  the 
first  essential  is  brains — and  if  you  can  give  the  time 
to  the  matter,  your  own  head  will  probably  be  the 
best  one  for  your  purposes.  If,  then,  you  are  willing 
to  undertake  the  job  yourself,  all  you  need  is  some 
person  or  persons  to  carry  out  your  instructions,  and 
such  are  by  no  means  difficult  to  find.  I  have  had 
many  a  case  run"down  by  my  own  office  force — clerks, 
lawyers,  and  stenographers,  all  taking  a  turn  at  it. 
Why  not?  Is  the  professional  sleuth  working  on  a 
fixed  salary  for  a  regular  agency  and  doing  a  dozen 
different  jobs  each  month  as  likely  to  bring  to  bear 
upon  your  own  private  problem  as  much  intelli- 
gence as  you  yourself? 

There  is  no  mystery  about  such  work,  except  what 
the  detective  himself  sees  fit  to  enshroud  it  with. 
Most  of  us  do  detective  work  all  the  time  without 
being  conscious  of  it.  Simply  because  the  matter 
concerns  the  theft  of  a  pearl,  or  the  betraying  of  a 
business  or  professional  secret,  or  the  disappearance 
of  a  friend,  the  opinion  of  a  stranger  becomes  no 
more  valuable.  And  the  chances  are  equal  that  the 
stranger  will  make  a  bungle  of  it. 

Many  of  the  best  available  detectives  are  men  who 
work  by  themselves  without  any  permanent  staff, 
and  who  have  their  own  regular  clients,  generally 
law  firms  and  corporations.  Almost  any  attorney 
knows  several  such,  and  the  chief  advantage  of  em- 
ploying one  of  them  lies  in  the  fact  that  you  can 
learn  just  what  their  abilities  are  by  personal  expe- 
rience. They  usually  coihmand  a  high  rate  of  re- 


DETECTIVES  AND  OTHERS          111 

numeration,  but  deductive  ability  and  resourceful- 
ness are  so  rare  that  they  are  at  a  premium  and  can 
only  be  secured  by  paying  it.  These  men  are  able, 
if  necessary,  to  assume  the  character  of  a  doctor, 
traveller,  man-about-town,  or  business  agent  with- 
out wearing  in  their  lapels  a  sign  that  they  are  de- 
tectives, and  they  will  reason  ahead  of  the  other  fel- 
low and  can  sometimes  calculate  pretty  closely  what 
he  will  do.  Twenty-five  dollars  a  day  will  generally 
hire  the  best  of  them,  and  they  are  well  worth  it. 

The  detective  business  swarms  with  men  of  doubt- 
ful honesty  and  morals,  who  are  under  a  constant 
temptation  to  charge  for  services  not  rendered  and 
.expenses  not  incurred,  who  are  accustomed  to  ex- 
aggeration if  not  to  perjury,  and  who  have  neither 
rthe  inclination  nor  the  ability  to  do  competent  work. 

Once  they  get  their  clutches  on  a  wealthy  client,^ 
they*  resemble  the  shyster  lawyer  in  their  efforts  to 
bleed  him  by  stimulating  his  fears  of  publicity  and 
by  holding  out  false  hopes  of  success,  and  thus  pro- 
longing their  period  of  service.  An  unscrupulous  de- 
tective will,  almost  as  a  matter  of  course,  work  on 
two  jobs  at  once  and  charge  all  his  time  to  each  client. 
He  will  constantly  report  progress  when  nothing  has 
been  accomplished,  and  his  expenses  will  fill  pages 
of  his  notebook.  Meantime  his  daily  reports  will 
fall  like  a  shower  of  autumn  leaves.  In  no  profes- 
sion is  it  more  essential  to  know  the  man  who  is 
working  for  you.  If  you  need  a  detective,  get  the 
best  you  can  find,  put  a  limit  on  the  expense,  and 
give  him  your  absolute  confidence. 


CHAPTER  VI 
DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

IN  the  preceding  chapter  the  writer  discussed  at 
some  length  the  real,  as  distinguished  from  the 
fancied,  attributes  of  detectives  in  general,  and  the 
weaknesses  as  well  as  the  virtues  of  the  so-called  de- 
tective "  agency."  There  are  in  the  city  of  New  York 
at  the  present  time  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
licensed  detectives.  Under  the  detective  license  laws 
each  of  these  has  been  required  to  file  with  the  State 
comptroller  written  evidences  of  his  good  character, 
competency,  and  integrity,  approved  by  five  reputa- 
ble freeholders  of  his  county,  and  to  give  bond  in  the 
sum  of  two  thousand  dollars.  He  also  has  to  pay  a 
license  fee  of  one  hundred  dollars  per  annum,  but  this 
enables  him  to  employ  as  many  "  operators "  as  he 
chooses.  In  other  words,  the  head  of  the  agency 
may  be  a  high-class  man  and  his  agents  wholly 
undesirable  citizens.  How  often  this  is  the  case  is 
known  to  none  better  than  the  heads  themselves. 
The  strength  and  efficiency  of  a  detective  agency 
does  not  lie  in  the  name  at  the  top  of  its  letter-paper, 
but  in  the  unknown  personnel  of  the  men  who  are 
doing  or  shirking  the  work.  I  believe  that  most  of 
the  principals  of  the  many  agencies  throughout  the 
United  States  are  animated  by  a  serious  desire  to 

112 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         113 

give  their  clients  a  full  return  for  their  money  and 
loyal  and  honest  service.  But  the  best  intentions 
in  the  world  cannot  make  up  for  the  lack  of  untiring 
vigilance  in  supervising  the  men  who  are  being  em- 
ployed in  the  client's  service. 

It  is  right  here  that  the  "national"  has  an  im- 
mense advantage  over  the  small  agency  which  cannot 
afford  to  keep  a  large  staff  of  men  constantly  on 
hand,  but  is  forced  to  engage  them  temporarily  as 
they  may  be  needed.  The  "national"  agency  can 
shift  its  employees  from  place  to  place  as  their  ser- 
vices are  required,  and  the  advantages  of  centraliza- 
tion are  felt  as  much  in  this  sort  of  work  as  in  any 
other  industry.  The  licensed  detective  who  sends 
out  a  hurry  call  for  assistants  is  apt  to  be  able  to 
get  only  men  whom  he  would  otherwise  not  employ. 
In  this  chapter,  the  word  "national,"  as  applied  to 
a  detective  agency,  refers  not  to  the  title  under 
which  such  an  agency  may  do  its  business,  but  to 
the  fact  that  it  is  organized  and  equipped  to  render 
services  all  over  the  country.  t 

In  this  connection  it  is  worth  noticing  that  the 
best  detective  agencies  train  their  own  operators, 
selecting  them  from  picked  material.  The  candidate 
must  as  a  rule  be  between  twenty  and  thirty-five 
years  of  age,  sound  of  body,  and  reasonably  intel- 
ligent. He  gets  pretty  good  wages  from  the  start. 
From  the  comparatively  easy  work  of  watching  or 
"locating,"  he  is  advanced  through  the  more  diffi- 
cult varieties  of  "shadowing"  and  "trailing,"  until 
eventually  he  may  develop  into  a  first-class  man 


114          DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

who  will  be  set  to  unravel  a  murder  mystery  or  to 
"rope"  a  professional  criminal.  But  with  years  of 
training  the  best  material  makes  few  real  detectives, 
and  the  real  detective  remains  in  fact  the  man  who  sits 
at  the  mahogany  desk  in  the  central  office  and  presses 
the  row  of  mother  of  pearl  buttons  in  front  of  him. 

If  you  know  the  heads  or  superintendents  of  the 
large  agencies  you  will  find  that  the  "star"  cases,  of 
which  they  like  to  talk,  are,  for  the  most  part,  the 
pursuit  and  capture  of  forgers  and  murderers.  The 
former,  as  a  rule,  are  "spotted"  and  "trailed"  to 
their  haunts,  and  when  sufficient  evidence  has  been 
obtained  the  police  are  notified,  and  a  raid  takes 
place,  or  the  arrest  is  made,  by  the  State  authorities. 
In  the  case  of  a  murderer,  in  a  majority  of  cases,  his 
capture  is  the  result  of  skilful  "roping"  by  an  astute 
detective  who  manages  to  get  into  his  confidence. 
For  example,  a  murder  is  committed  by  an  Italian 
miner.  Let  us  suppose  he  has  killed  his  "boss,"  or 
even  the  superintendent  or  owner.  He  disappears. 
As  the  reader  knows,  the  Italians  are  so  secretive 
that  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  secure  any  informa- 
tion— even  from  the  relatives  of  a  murdered  man. 

The  first  thing  is  to  locate  the  assassin.  An  Italian 
detective  is  sent  into  the  mine  as  a  laborer.  Months 
may  elapse  before  he  gets  on  familiar  or  intimate 
terms  with  his  fellows.  All  the  time  he  is  listening 
and  watching.  Presently  he  hears  something  that 
indicates  that  the  murderer  is  communicating  with 
one  of  his  old  friends  either  directly  or  through  third 
parties.  It  is  then  generally  only  a  question  of  time 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         115 

before  his  whereabouts  are  ascertained.  Once  he  is 
"located"  the  same  method  is  followed  in  securing 
additional  evidence  or  material  in  the  nature  of  a 
confession  or  admission  tending  to  establish  guilt. 
Having  previously  "roped"  the  murderer's  friends, 
the  detective  now  proceeds  to  the  more  difficult  task 
of  "roping"  the  murderer  himself.  Of  course,  the 
life  of  a  detective  in  a  Pennsylvania  coal  mine  would 
be  valueless  if  his  identity  were  discovered,  and  yet 
the  most  daring  pieces  of  detective  work  are  con- 
stantly being  performed  under  these  and  similar 
conditions.  Where  the  criminal  is  not  known,  the 
task  becomes  far  more  difficult  and  at  times  exceed- 
ingly dangerous. 

One  of  my  own  friends,  an  Italian  gentleman, 
spent  several  months  in  the  different  mines  of  this 
country,  where  Italians  are  largely  employed,  in- 
vestigating conditions  and  ascertaining  for  the  bene- 
fit of  his  government  the  extent  to  which  anarchy 
was  prevalent.  It  was  necessary  for  him  to  secure 
work  as  a  miner  at  the  lowest  wages  and  to  disguise 
himself  in  such  a  way  that  it  would  be  impossible  for 
anybody  to  detect  his  true  character.  Fortunately, 
the  great  diversity  of  Italian  dialects  facilitated  his 
efforts  and  enabled  him  to  pass  himself  off  as  from 
another  part  of  the  country  than  his  comrades.  Hav- 
ing made  his  preparations  he  came  to  New  York  as 
an  immigrant  and  joined  a  party  of  newly  arrived 
Italians  on  their  way  to  the  coal  mines  of  West  Vir- 
ginia. Without  following  him  further,  it  is  enough 
to  say  that  during  his  service  in  the  mines  he  over- 


116         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

heard  much  that  was  calculated  to  interest  exceed- 
ingly the  authorities  at  Rome.  Had  his  disguise  been 
penetrated  the  quick  thrust  of  a  five-inch  blade  would 
have  ended  his  career.  He  would  never  have  returned 
to  New  York.  There  would  only  have  been  another 
dead  "Dago"  miner.  The  local  coroner  would  have 
driven  up  in  his  buggy,  looked  at  the  body,  examined 
the  clean,  deep  wound  in  the  abdomen,  shrugged  his 
shoulders,  and  empanelled  a  heterogeneous  jury  who 
would  have  returned  a  verdict  to  the  effect  that  "de- 
ceased came  to  his  death  through  a  stab  wound  in- 
flicted by  some  person  to  the  jury  unknown."  My 
friend  was  not  a  professional  detective,  but  the  re- 
cital of  his  experiences  was  enough  to  fill  me  with 
new  respect  for  those  engaged  in  the  "man  hunt" 
business  among  the  half  civilized  miners  of  the  coal 
regions. 

But  the  work  of  even  the  "national"  agencies  is 
not  of  the  kind  which  the  novel-reading  public  gen- 
erally associates  with  detectives — that  is  to  say,  it 
rarely  deals  with  the  unravelling  of  "mysteries," 
except  the  identity  of  passers  of  fraudulent  paper 
and  occasional  murderers.  The  protection  of  the 
banks  is  naturally  the  most  important  work  that 
such  an  agency  can  perform. 

The  National  Bankers'  Association  consists  of 
eleven  thousand  members.  "Pinkerton's  Bank  and 
Bankers'  Protection"  has  a  large  organization  of 
subscribers.  These  devote  themselves  to  identi- 
fying and  running  down  all  criminals  whose  activi- 
ties are  dangerous  to  them.  Here  the  agency  and  the 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         117 

police  work  hand  in  hand,  exchanging  photographs 
of  crooks  and  suspects  and  keeping  closely  informed 
as  to  each  other's  doings.  Yet  there  is  no  official 
connection  between  any  detective  agency  and  the 
police  of  any  city.  It  is  an  almost  universal  rule  that 
a  private  detective  shall  not  make  an  arrest.  The 
reasons  for  this  are  manifold.  In  the  first  place,  the 
private  detective  has  neither  the  general  authority 
nor  the  facilities  for  the  manual  detention  of  a  crim- 
inal. A  blue  coat  and  brass  buttons,  to  say  nothing 
of  a  night  stick,  are  often  invaluable  stage  properties 
in  the  last  act  of  the  melodrama.  And  as  the  criminal 
authorities  are  eventually  to  deal  with  the  defendant 
anyway,  it  is  just  as  well  if  they  come  into  the  case 
as  soon  as  may  be.  It  goes  without  saying,  of  course, 
that  a  detective  per  se  has  no  more  right  to  make  an 
arrest  than  any  private  citizen — nor  has  a  police- 
man, for  that  matter,  save  in  exceptional  cases.  The 
officer  is  valuable  for  his  dignity,  avoirdupois,  "brace- 
lets/' and  other  accessories.  The  police  thus  get  the 
credit  of  many  arrests  in  difficult  cases  where  all  the 
work  has  been  done  by  private  detectives,  and  it  is 
good  business  for  the  latter  to  keep  mum  about  it. 

One  of  the  chief  assets  of  the  big  agency  is  its  ac- 
cumulated information  concerning  all  sorts  of  pro- 
fessional criminals.  Its  galleries  are  quite  as  com- 
plete as  those  of  the  local  head-quarters,  for  a  con- 
stant exchange  of  art  objects  is  going  on  with  the 
police  throughout  the  world.  And  as  the  agency  is 
protecting  banks  all  over  the  United  States  it  has 
greater  interest  hi  all  bank  burglars  as  a  class  than 


118         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

the  police  of  any  particular  city  who  are  only  con- 
cerned with  the  burglars  who  (as  one  might  say) 
burgle  in  their  particular  burg.  Thus,  you  are  more 
likely  to  find  a  detective  from  a  national  agency  fol- 
lowing a  forger  to  Australasia  or  Polynesia  than  you 
are  a  sleuth  from  300  Mulberry  Street,  New  York. 

The  best  agencies  absolutely  decline  to  touch  di- 
vorce and  matrimonial  cases  of  any  sort.  It  does 
not  do  a  detective  agency  any  good  to  have  its  men 
constantly  upon  the  witness  stand  subject  to  attack, 
with  a  consequent  possible  reflection  upon  their 
probity  of  character  and  truthfulness.  Moreover,  a 
good  detective  is  too  valuable  a  person  to  be  wasting 
his  time  in  the  court-room.  In  the  ordinary  divorce 
case  the  detective,  having  procured  his  evidence,  is 
obliged  to  remain  on  tap  and  subject  to  call  as  a  wit- 
ness for  at  least  three  or  four  months,  during  which 
time  he  cannot  be  sent  away  on  distant  work. 
Neither  can  the  customer  be  charged  ordinarily  for 
waiting  time,  and  apart  from  its  malodorous  char- 
acter the  business  is  not  desirable  from  a  financial 
point  of  view. 

The  national  agencies  prefer  clean  criminal  work, 
murder  cases,  and  general  investigating.  They  no 
longer  undertake  any  policing,  strike-breaking,  or 
J  guarding.  The  most  ridiculous  misinformation  in 

regard  to  their  participation  in  this  sort  of  work  has 
been  spread  broadcast  largely  by  jealous  enemies 
and  by  the  labor  unions. 

By  way  of  illustration,  one  Thomas  Beet,  describ- 
ing himself  as  an  English  detective,  contributed  an 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         119 

article  to  the  New  York  Tribune  of  September  16, 
1906,  in  which  he  said : 

"In  one  of  the  greatest  of  our  strikes,  that  involv- 
ing the  steel  industry,  over  two  thousand  armed  de- 
tectives were  employed  supposedly  to  protect  prop- 
erty, while  several  hundred  more  were  scattered  in 
the  ranks  of  strikers  as  workmen.  Many  of  the  latter 
became  officers  in  the  labor  bodies,  helped  to  make 
laws  for  the  organizations,  made  incendiary  speeches, 
cast  their  votes  for  the  most  radical  movements 
made  by  the  strikers,  participated  in  and  led  bodies 
of  the  members  in  the  acts  of  lawlessness  that  event- 
ually caused  the  sending  of  State  troops  and  the 
declaration  of  martial  law.  While  doing  this,  these 
spies  within  the  ranks  were  making  daily  reports  of 
the  plans  and  purposes  of  the  strikers.  To  my 
knowledge,  when  lawlessness  was  at  its  height  and 
murder  ran  riot,  these  men  wore  little  patches  of 
white  on  the  lapels  of  their  coats  so  that  their  fellow 
detectives  of  the  two  thousand  would  not  shoot  them 
down  by  mistake." 

He,  of  course,  referred  to  the  great  strike  at  Home- 
stead, Pennsylvania,  in  1892.  In  point  of  fact,  there 
were  only  six  private  detectives  engaged  on  the  side 
of  the  employers  at  that  time,  and  these  were  there 
to  assist  the  local  authorities  in  taking  charge  of  six 
hundred  and  fifty  watchmen,  and  to  help  place  the 
latter  upon  the  property  of  the  steel  company.  These 
watchmen  were  under  the  direction  of  the  sheriff  and 
sworn  in  as  peace  officers  of  the  county.  Mr.  Beet 
seems  to  have  confused  his  history  and  mixed  up  the 


120         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

white  handkerchief  of  the  Huguenots  of  Nantes  with 
the  strike-breakers  of  Pennsylvania.  It  is  needless 
to  repeat  (as  Mr.  Hobert  A.  Pinkerton  stated  at  the 
time)  that  the  white  label  story  is  ridiculously  un- 
true, and  that  it  was  the  strikers  who  attacked  the 
watchmen,  and  not  the  watchmen  the  strikers.  One 
striker  and  one  watchman  were  killed. 

But  this  attack  of  Mr.  Beet  upon  his  own  profes- 
sion, under  the  guise  of  being  an  English  detective 
(it  developed  that  he  was  an  ex-divorce  detective 
from  New  York  City),  was  not  confined  to  his  re- 
marks about  inciting  wanton  murder.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  alleged  (as  one  having  authority  and  not 
merely  as  a  scribe)  that  American  detective  agencies 
were  practically  nothing  but  blackmailing  concerns, 
which  used  the  information  secured  in  a  professional 
capacity  to  extort  money  from  their  own  clients. 

"Think  of  the  so-called  detective,"  says  Mr.  Beet, 
"whose  agency  pays  him  two  dollars  or  two  dollars 
and  fifty  cents  a  day,  being  engaged  upon  confiden- 
tial work  and  in  the  possession  of  secrets  that  he 
knows  are  worth  money!  Is  it  any  wonder  that  so 
many  cases  are  sold  out  by  employees,  even  when  the 
agencies  are  honest?" 

We  are  constrained  to  answer  that  it  is  no  more 
wonderful  than  that  any  person  earning  the  same 
sum  should  remain  honest  when  he  might  so  easily 
turn  thief.  As  the  writer  has  himself  pointed  out  in 
these  pages,  there  are  hundreds  of  so-called  detective 
agencies  which  are  but  traps  for  the  guileless  citi- 
zen who  calls  upon  them  for  aid.  But  there  are  many 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         121 

which  are  as  honestly  conducted  as  any  other  variety 
of  legitimate  business.  I  do  not  know  Mr.  Beet's 
personal  experience,  but  it  appears  to  have  been  un- 
fortunate. At  any  rate,  his  diatribe  is  unfounded 
and  false,  and  the  worst  feature  of  it  is  his  assertion 
that  detective  agencies  make  a  business  of  manu- 
facturing cases  when  there  happen  to  be  none  on 
hand. 

"Soon,"  says  he,  "there  were  not  enough  cases  to 
go  around,  and  then  with  the  aid  of  spies  and  inform- 
ers the  unscrupulous  detectives  began  to  make  cases. 
Agencies  began  to  work  up  evidence  against  persons 
and  then  resorted  to  blackmail,  or  else  approached 
those  to  whom  the  information  might  be  valuable,  and 
by  careful  manoeuvring  had  themselves  retained  to 
unravel  the  case.  This  brought  into  existence  hordes 
of  professional  informers  who  secured  the  opening 
wedges  for  the  fake  agencies.  Men  and  women,  many 
of  them  of  some  social  standing,  made  it  a  practice 
to  pry  around  for  secrets  which  might  be  valuable; 
spies  kept  up  their  work  in  large  business  establish- 
ments and  began  to  haunt  the  cafes  and  resorts  of 
doubtful  reputation,  on  the  watch  for  persons  of 
wealth  and  prominence  who  might  be  foolish  enough 
to  place  themselves  in  compromising  circumstances. 
Even  the  servants  in  wealthy  families  soon  learned 
that  certain  secrets  of  the  master  and  mistress  could 
be  turned  to  profitable  account.  We  shudder  when 
we  hear  of  the  system  of  espionage  maintained  in 
Russia,  while  in  the  large  American  cities,  unnoticed, 
are  organizations  of  spies  and  informers  on  every 


122          DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

hand  who  spend  their  lives  digging  pitfalls  for  the 
unwary  who  can  afford  to  pay." 

One  would  think  that  we  were  living  in  the  days 
of  the  Borgias!  "Ninety  per  cent,"  says  Mr.  Beet, 
"of  private  detective  agencies  are  rotten  to  the  core 
and  simply  exist  and  thrive  upon  a  foundation  of 
dishonesty,  deceit,  conspiracy,  and  treachery  to  the 
public  in  general  and  then-  own  patrons  in  particular. 
There  are  detectives  at  the  heads  of  prominent  agencies 
in  this  country  whose  pictures  acforn  the  Rogues' 
Gallery;  men  who  have  served  time  in  various  prisons 
for  almost  every  crime  on  the  calendar." 

This  harrowing  picture  has  the  modicum  of  truth 
that  makes  it  insidiously  dangerous.  But  this  last 
extravagance  betrays  the  denunciator.  One  would 
be  interested  to  have  this  past-master  of  overstate- 
ment mention  the  names  of  these  distinguished  crooks 
that  head  the  prominent  agencies.  Their  exposure,  if 
true,  would  not  be  libellous,  and  it  would  seem  that 
he  had  performed  but  half  his  duty  to  the  public  in 
refraining  from  giving  this  important,  if  not  vital, 
information. 

I  know  several  of  these  gentlemen  whose  pictures 
I  feel  confident  do  not  appear  in  and  (much  less)  do 
not  adorn  the  Rogues'  Gallery,  and  who  have  not 
been,  as  yet,  convicted  of  crime.  A  client  is  as  safe 
in  the  hands  of  a  good  detective  agency  as  he  is  in 
the  hands  of  a  good  lawyer;  he  should  know  his 
agency,  that  is  all — just  as  he  should  know  his  lawyer. 
The  men  at  the  head  of  the  big  agencies  generally 
take  the  same  pride  in  their  work  as  the  members  of 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         123 

any  learned  profession.  They  know  that  a  first-class 
reputation  for  honesty  is  essential  to  their  financial 
success  and  that  good  will  is  their  stock  in  trade. 
Take  this  away  and  they  would  have  nothing. 

In  1878  the  founder  of  one  of  the  most  famous  of 
our  national  agencies  promulgated  in  printed  form 
for  the  benefit  of  his  employees  what  he  called  his 
general  principles.  One  of  these  was  the  following: 

"This  agency  only  offers  its  services  at  a  stated 
per  diem  for  each  detective  employed  on  an  opera- 
tion, giving  no  guarantee  of  success,  except  in  the 
reputation  for  reliability  and  efficiency;  and  any 
person  in  its  service  who  shall,  under  any  circum- 
stances, permit  himself  or  herself  to  receive  a  gift, 
reward,  or  bribe  shall  be  instantly  dismissed  from 
the  service." 

Another: 

"The  profession  of  the  detective  is  a  high  and  hon- 
orable calling.  Few  professions  excel  it.  He  is  an 
officer  of  justice,  and  must  himself  be  pure  and  above 
reproach." 

Again : 

"It  is  an  evidence  of  the  unfitness  of  the  detective 
for  his  profession  when  he  is  compelled  to  resort  to 
the  use  of  intoxicating  liquors;  and,  indeed,  the 
strongest  kind  of  evidence,  if  he  continually  resorts 
to  this  evil  practice.  The  detective  must  not  do  any- 
thing to  farther  sink  the  criminal  in  vice  or  debauch- 
ery, but,  on  the  contrary,  must  seek  to  win  his  con- 
fidence by  endeavoring  to  elevate  him,  etc." 

"Kindness  and  justice  should  go  hand  in  hand, 
whenever  it  is  possible,  in  the  dealings  of  the  detec- 


124         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

tive  with  the  criminal.  There  is  no  human  being  so 
degraded  but  there  is  some  little  bright  spark  of  con- 
science and  of  right  still  existing  in  him." 

Last: 

"The  detective  must,  in  every  instance,  report 
everything  which  is  favorable  to  the  suspected  party, 
as  well  as  everything  which  may  be  against  him." 

The  man  who  penned  these  principles  had  had  the 
safety  of  Abraham  Lincoln  in  his  keeping;  and  these 
simple  statements  of  his  faith  are  the  best  refutation 
of  the  baseless  assertions  above  referred  to. 

It  may  be  that  in  those  days  the  detection  of  crime 
was  a  bit  more  elementary  than  at  the  present  time. 
One  can  hardly  picture  a  modern  sleuth  delaying 
long  in  an  attempt  to  evangelize  his  quarry,  but  these 
general  principles  are  the  right  stuff  and  shine  like 
good  deeds  in  a  naughty  world. 

As  one  peruses  this  little  pink  pamphlet  he  is 
constantly  struck  by  the  repeated  references  to  the 
detective  as  an  actor.  That  was  undoubtedly  the 
ancient  concept  of  a  sleuth.  "He  must  possess, 
also,  the  player's  faculty  of  assuming  any  char- 
acter that  his  case  may  require,  and  of  acting  it  out 
to  the  life  with  an  ease  and  naturalness  which  shall 
not  be  questioned."  This  somewhat  large  order  is, 
to  our  relief,  qualified  a  little  later  on.  "  It  is  not  to 
be  expected,  however,"  the  author  admits,  "that 
every  detective  shall  possess  these  rare  qualifica- 
tions, although  the  more  talented  and  versatile  he  is, 
the  higher  will  be  the  sphere  of  operation  which  he 
will  command." 

The  modern  detective  agency  is   conducted  on 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         125 

business  principles  and  does  not  look  for  histrionic 
talent  or  general  versatility.  As  one  of  the  heads  of 
a  prominent  agency  said  to  me  the  other  day: 

"When  we  want  a  detective  to  take  the  part  of 
a  plumber  we  get  a  plumber,  and  when  we  need  one  to 
act  as  a  boiler-maker  we  go  out  and  get  a  real  one — 
if  we  haven't  one  on  our  pay  rolls." 

"But/'  I  replied,  "when  you  need  a  man  to  go  into 
a  private  family  and  pretend  to  be  an  English  clergy- 
man, or  a  French  viscount,  or  a  brilliant  man  of  the 
world— who  do  you  send?" 

The  "head"  smiled. 

"The  case  hasn't  arisen  yet,"  said  he.  "When  it 
does  I  guess  we'll  get  the  real  thing." 

The  national  detective  agency,  with  its  thousands 
of  employees  who  have,  most  of  them,  grown  up  and 
received  their  training  in  its  service,  is  a  powerful 
organization,  highly  centralized,  and  having  an  im- 
mense sinking  fund  of  special  knowledge  and  past 
experience.  This  is  the  product  of  decades  of  patient 
labor  and  minute  record.  The  agency  which  offers 
you  the  services  of  a  Sherlock  Holmes  is  a  fraud,  but 
you  can  accept  as  genuine  a  proposition  to  run  down 
any  man  whose  picture  you  may  be  able  to  identify 
in  the  gallery.  The  day  of  the  impersonator  is  over. 
The  detective  of  this  generation  is  a  hard-headed 
business  man  with  a  stout  pair  of  legs. 

This  accumulated  fund  of  information  is  the  heri- 
tage of  an  honest  and  long  established  industry.  It 
is  seventy-five  per  cent  of  its  capital.  It  is  entirely 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  mushroom  agency,  which  in 


126         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

consequence  has  to  accept  less  desirable  retainers  in- 
volving no  such  requirements,  or  go  to  the  wall.  The 
collection  of  photographs  is  almost  priceless  and 
the  clippings,  letters,  and  memoranda  in  the  filing 
cases  only  secondarily  so.  Very  few  of  the  "  oper- 
ators "  pretend  to  anything  but  common-sense  with, 
perhaps,  some  special  knowledge  of  the  men  they 
are  after.  They  are  not  clairvoyants  or  mystery 
men,  but  they  will  tirelessly  follow  a  crook  until  they 
get  him.  They  are  the  regular  troops  who  take  their 
orders  without  question.  The  real  "  detective "  is 
the  "boss"  who  directs  them. 

The  reader  can  easily  see  that  in  all  cases  where  a 
crime,  such  as  forgery,  is  concerned,  once  the  identity 
of  the  criminal  is  ascertained,  half  the  work  (or  more 
than  half)  is  done.  The  agencies  know  the  face  and 
record  of  practically  every  man  who  ever  flew  a  bit 
of  bad  paper  in  the  United  States,  in  England,  or  on 
the  Continent.  If  an  old  hand  gets  out  of  prison  his 
movements  are  watched  until  it  is  obvious  that  he 
does  not  intend  to  resort  to  his  old  tricks.  After 
the  criminal  is  known  or  "located,"  the  "trailing" 
begins  and  his  "connections"  are  carefully  studied. 
This  may  or  may  not  require  what  might  be  called 
real  detective  work;  that  is  to  say,  work  requiring  a 
superior  power  of  deducing  conclusions  from  first- 
hand information,  coupled  with  unusual  skill  in  act- 
ing upon  them.  Mere  trailing  is  often  simple,  yet 
sometimes  very  difficult.  A  great  deal  depends  on 
the  operator's  own  peculiar  information  as  to  his 
man's  habits,  haunts,  and  associates.  It  is  very  hard 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         127 

to  say  in  most  cases  just  where  mere  knowledge  ends 
and  detective  work  proper  begins.  As  for  disguises, 
they  are  almost  unknown,  except  such  as  are  neces- 
sary to  enable  an  operator  to  join  a  gang  where  his 
quarry  may  be  working  and  "rope"  him  into  a  con- 
fession. 

Detective  agencies  of  the  first-class  are  engaged 
principally  in  clean-cut  criminal  work,  such  as  guard- 
ing banks  from  forgers  and  "yeggmen" — an  original 
and  dangerous  variety  of  burglar  peculiar  to  the 
United  States  and  Canada.  In  other  words,  they 
have  large  associations  for  clients  who  need  more  pro- 
tection than  the  regular  police  can  give  them,  and 
whose  interest  it  is  that  the  criminal  shall  not  only 
be  driven  out  of  town,  but  run  down  (wherever  he 
may  be),  captured,  and  put  out  of  the  way  for  as 
long  a  time  as  possible. 

The  work  done  for  private  individuals  is  no  less 
important  and  effective,  but  it  is  secondary  to  the 
other.  The  great  value  of  the  "agency"  to  the  vic- 
tim of  a  theft  is  the  speed  with  which  it  can  dissem- 
inate its  information — something  quite  impossible  so 
far  as  the  individual  citizen  is  concerned.  Let  me 
give  an  illustration  or  two. 

Between  10.30  p.  M.  Saturday,  February  25,  1911, 
and  9.30  A.  M.  Sunday,  February  26,  1911,  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  thousand  dollars  worth  of  pearls  be- 
longing to  Mrs.  Maldwin  Drummond  were  stolen 
from  a  stateroom  on  the  steamship  Amerika  of  the 
Hamburg-American  line.  The  London  underwriters 
cabled  five  thousand  dollars  reward  and  retained  to 


128         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

investigate  the  case  a  well-known  American  agency, 
which  before  the  Amerika  had  reached  Plymouth 
on  her  return  trip  had  their  notifications  in  the 
hands  of  all  the  jewelers  and  police  officials  of  Europe 
and  the  United  States,  and  had  covered  every  avenue 
of  disposal  in  North  and  South  America.  In  addi- 
tion, this  agency  investigated  every  human  being 
on  the  Amerika  from  first  cabin  to  forecastle. 

Within  a  year  or  so  an  aged  stock-broker,  named 
Bancroft,  was  robbed  on  the  street  of  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars  in  securities.  Inside  of  fifty-five 
minutes  after  he  had  reported  his  loss  a  detective 
agency  had  notified  all  banks,  brokers,  and  the  police 
in  fifty-six  cities  of  the  United  States  and  Canada. 

The  telephone  is  the  modern  detective's  chief  ally, 
and  he  relies  upon  rapidity  more  than  upon  deduc- 
tion. Under  present  conditions  it  is  easier  to  over- 
take a  crook  than  to,  reason  out  what  he  will  probably 
do.  In  fact,  the  old-fashioned  "deductive  detective" 
is  largely  a  man  of  the  past.  The  most  useless 
operator  in  the  world  is  the  one  who  is  "wedded  to 
his  own  theory"  of  the  case — the  man  who  asks  no 
questions  and  relies  only  on  himself.  Interject  a 
new  element  into  a  case  and  such  a  man  is  all  at  sea. 
In  the  meantime  the  criminal  has  made  his  "get 
away." 

In  the  story  books  your  detective  scans  with  eagle 
eye  the  surface  of  the  floor  for  microscopic  evi- 
dences of  crime.  His  mind  leaps  from  a  cigar  ash  to 
a  piece  of  banana  peel  and  thence  to  what  the  family 
had  for  dinner.  His  brain  is  working  all  the  time. 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT          129 

His  gray  matter  dwarfs  almost  to  insignificance  that 
of  Daniel  Webster  or  the  Hon.  Benjamin  F.  Butler. 
It  is,  of  course,  all  quite  wonderful  and  most  ex- 
cellent reading,  and  the  old-style  sleuth  really 
thought  he  could  do  it!  Nowadays,  while  the  fake 
detective  is  snooping  around  the  back  piazza  with 
a  telescope,  the  real  one  is  getting  the  "dope"  from 
the  village  blacksmith  or  barber  (if  there  is  any  ex- 
cept on  Saturday  nights)  or  the  girl  that  slings  the 
pie  at  the  station.  These  folk  have  something  to  go 
on.  They  may  not  be  highly  intelligent,  but  they 
know  the  country,  and,  what  is  more  important,  they 
know  the  people.  All  the  brains  in  the  world  cannot 
make  up  for  the  lack  of  an  elementary  knowledge  of 
the  place  and  the  characters  themselves.  It  stands 
to  reason  that  no  strange  detective  could  form  as 
good  an  opinion  as  to  which  of  the  members  of  your 
household  would  be  most  likely  to  steal  a  piece  of 
jewelry  as  you  could  yourself.  Yet  the  old-fashioned 
Sherlock  knew  and  knows  it  all. 

One  of  the  best  illustrations  of  the  practical  neces- 
sity of  some  first-hand  knowledge  is  that  afforded 
by  the  recovery  of  a  diamond  necklace  belonging 
to  the  wife  of  a  gentleman  in  a  Connecticut  town. 
The  facts  that  are  given  here  are  absolutely  accurate. 
The  gentleman  in  question  was  a  retired  business 
man  of  some  means  who  lived  not  far  from  the  town 
and  who  made  frequent  visits  to  New  York  City. 
He  had  made  his  wife  a  present  of  a  fifteen  thousand- 
dollar  diamond  necklace,  which  she  kept  in  a  box 
in  a  locked  trunk  in  her  bedroom.  While  she  had 


130         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

owned  the  necklace  for  over  a  year  she  had  never  worn 
it.  One  evening  having  guests  for  dinner  on  the 
occasion  of  her  wedding  anniversary  she  decided  to 
put  it  on  and  wear  it  for  the  first  time.  That  night 
she  replaced  it  in  its  box  and  enclosed  this  in  another 
box,  which  she  locked  and  placed  in  her  bureau 
drawer.  This  she  also  locked.  The  following  night 
she  decided  to  replace  the  necklace  in  the  trunk. 
She  accordingly  unlocked  the  bureau  drawer,  and  also 
the  larger  box,  which  apparently  was  in  exactly  the 
same  condition  as  when  she  had  put  it  away.  But 
the  inner  box  was  empty  and  the  necklace  had  abso- 
lutely disappeared.  Now,  no  one  had  seen  the  neck- 
lace for  a  year,  and  then  only  her  husband,  their  ser- 
vants, and  two  or  three  old  friends.  No  outsider 
could  have  known  of  its  existence.  There  was  no 
evidence  of  the  house  or  bureau  having  been  dis- 
turbed. 

A  New  York  detective  agency  was  at  once  retained, 
which  sent  one  of  its  best  men  to  the  scene  of  the 
crime.  He  examined  the  servants,  heard  the  story, 
and  reported  that  it  must  have  been  an  inside  job — 
that  there  was  no  possibility  of  anything  else.  But 
there  was  nothing  to  implicate  any  one  of  the  ser- 
vants, and  there  seemed  no  hope  of  getting  the  neck- 
lace back.  Two  or  three  days  later  the  husband 
turned  up  at  the  agency's  office  in  New  York,  and 
after  beating  about  the  bush  for  a  while,  remarked: 

"  I  want  to  tell  you  something.  You  have  got  this 
job  wrong.  There's  one  fact  your  man  didn't  under- 
stand. The  truth  is  that  I'm  a  pretty  easy  going  sort 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT          131 

of  a  feller,  and  every  six  months  or  so  I  take  all  the 
men  and  girls  employed  around  my  house  down  to 
Coney  Island  and  give  'em  a  rip-roaring  time.  I 
make  'em  my  friends,  and  I  dance  with  the  girls  and 
I  jolly  up  the  men,  and  we  are  all  good  pals  together. 
Sort  of  unconventional,  maybe,  but  it  pays.  I  know 
— see? — that  there  ain't  a  single  one  of  those  people 
who  would  do  me  a  mean  trick.  Not  one  of  'em 
but  would  lend  me  all  the  money  he  had.  I  don't 
care  what  your  operator  says,  the  person  who  took 
that  necklace  came  from  outside.  You  take  that 
from  me." 

The  superintendent,  who  is  wise  in  his  generation, 
scratched  his  chin. 

"Is  that  dead  on  the  level?"  he  inquired. 

"Gospel!"  answered  the  other. 

"I'll  come  up  myself!"  said  the  boss. 

Next  day  the  boss  behind  a  broken-winded 
horse,  in  a  dilapidated  buggy,  drove  from  another 
town  to  the  place  where  his  client  lived.  At  the 
smithy  on  the  cross-roads  he  stopped  and  borrowed 
a  match.  The  smith,  glad  of  an  excuse  to  leave  the 
heat  of  the  forge,  came  out  and  got  the  loan  of  a  chew 
from  the  boss. 

"Anybody  have  any  good  bosses  in  this  town?" 
asked  the  detective. 

"Betcher  life!"  answered  the  smith.  "Mr. 

up  on  the  hill  has  the  best  in  the  county!" 

"What  sort  of  a  feller  is  he?" 

The  smith  chewed  in  silence  for  a  moment. 

"Don't  know  him  myself,  but  I  tell  you  what,  his 


132         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

help  says  he's  the  best  employer  they  ever  had — and 
they  stay  there  forever!" 

The  boss  drove  on  to  the  house,  which  he  observed 
was  situated  at  about  an  equal  distance  from  three 
different  railway  stations  and  surrounded  by  a  piazza 
with  pillars.  He  walked  around  it,  examining  the 
vines  until  his  eye  caught  a  torn  creeper  and  a  white 
scratch  on  the  paint.  It  had  been  an  outside  job 
after  all,  and  two  weeks  had  already  been  lost.  De- 
duction was  responsible  for  a  mistake  which  would  not 
have  occurred  had  a  little  knowledge  been  acquired 
first.  That  is  the  lesson  of  this  story. 

The  denouement,  which  has  no  lesson  at  all,  is 
interesting.  The  superintendent  saw  no  prospect  of 
getting  back  the  necklace,  but  before  so  informing 
the  client,  decided  to  cogitate  on  the  matter  for  a 
day  or  two.  During  that  time  he  met  by  accident 
a  friend  who  made  a  hobby  of  studying  yeggmen 
and  criminals  and  occasionally  doing  a  bit  of  the 
amateur  tramp  act  himself. 

"By  the  way,"  said  the  friend,  "do  you  ever  hear 
of  any  'touches7  up  the  river  or  along  the  Sound?" 

"Sometimes,"  answered  the  boss,  pricking  up  his 
ears.  "Why  do  you  ask?" 

"Why,  the  other  night,"  replied  the  friend,  "I 
happened  to  be  meeting  my  wife  up  at  the  Grand 
Central  about  six  o'clock  and  I  saw  two  yeggs  that 
I  knew  taking  a  train  out.  I  thought  it  was  sort  of 
funny.  Pittsburgh  Ike  and  Denver  Red." 

"When  was  it?" 

"Two  weeks  ago,"  said  the  friend. 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         133 

"Thanks/'  returned  the  boss.  "You  must  excuse 
me  now;  I've  got  an  important  engagement/' 

Three  hours  later  Pittsburgh  Ike  and  Denver  Red 
were  in  a  cell  at  head-quarters.  At  six  o'clock  that 
evening  the  necklace  had  been  returned.  This  was  a 
coincidence  that  might  not  occur  in  a  hundred  years, 
but  had  the  deductive  detective  determined  the  ques- 
tion he  would  still  be  pondering  on  the  comparative 
probability  of  whether  the  cook,  the  chore  man,  or 
the  hired  girl  was  the  guilty  party. 

A  clean  bit  of  detection  on  the  part  of  an  agency, 
and  quite  in  the  day's  work,  was  the  comparatively 
recent  capture  of  a  thief  who  secured  three  hundred 
and  sixty  thousand  dollars  worth  of  securities  from 
a  famous  banking  institution  in  New  York  City  by 
means  of  a  very  simple  device.  A  firm  of  stock 
brokers  had  borrowed  from  this  bank  about  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  a  day  or  two 
and  put  up  the  securities  as  collateral.  In  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  business,  when  the  borrower  has  no 
further  use  for  the  money,  he  sends  up  a  certified 
check  for  the  amount  of  the  loan  with  interest,  and 
the  bank  turns  over  the  securities  to  the  messenger. 
In  this  particular  case  a  messenger  arrived  with  a 
certified  check,  shoved  it  into  the  cage,  and  took  away 
what  was  pushed  out  to  him  in  return — three  hundred 
and  sixty  thousand  dollars  in  bonds.  The  certifica- 
tion turned  out  to  be  a  forgery  and  the  securities 
vanished.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  police  were 
consulted  or  not.  Sometimes  in  such  cases  the  banks 
prefer  to  resort  to  more  private  methods  and,  per- 


134         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

haps,  save  the  necessity  of  making  a  public  admission 
of  their  stupidity.  When  my  friend,  the  superin- 
tendent, was  called  in,  the  officers  of  the  bank  were 
making  the  wildest  sort  of  guesses  as  to  the  identity 
of  the  master  mind  and  hand  which  had  deceived 
the  cashier.  He  must,  they  felt  sure,  have  made  the 
forgery  with  a  camel's  hair  brush  of  unrivalled  fine- 
ness. 

"A  great  artist!"  said  the  president. 

"The  most  skilful  forger  in  the  world!"  opined 
another. 

"We  must  run  down  all  the  celebrated  criminals!" 
announced  a  third. 

"Great  artist — nothing!"  remarked  the  boss, 
rubbing  his  thumb  over  the  certification  which 
blurred  at  the  touch.  "  He's  no  painter !  Why,  that's 
a  rubber  stamp!" 

What  a  shock  for  those  dignified  gentlemen!  To 
think  that  their  cashier  had  been  deceived  by  a  mere, 
plebeian,  common  or  garden  thing  of  rubber! 

"Good-day,  gents!"  said  the  boss,  putting  the 
check  in  his  wallet.  "I've  got  to  get  busy  with  the 
rubber  stamp  makers!" 

He  returned  to  his  office  and  detailed  a  dozen  men 
to  work  on  the  East  Side  and  a  dozen  on  the 
West  Side,  with  orders  to  search  out  every  man  in 
New  York  who  manufactured  rubber  stamps.  Be- 
fore the  end  of  the  afternoon  the  maker  was  found 
on  the  Bowery,  near  Houston  Street.  This  was  his 
story:  A  couple  of  weeks  before,  a  young  man  had 
come  in  and  ordered  a  certification  stamp,  drawing 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         135 

at  the  time  a  rough  design  of  what  he  wanted.  The 
stamp,  when  first  manufactured,  had  not  been  satis- 
factory to  him;  and  on  his  second  visit,  the  customer 
had  left  a  piece  of  a  check,  carefully  torn  out  in  cir- 
cular form,  which  showed  the  certification  which  he 
desired  copied.  This  fragment  the  maker  had  re- 
tained, as  well  as  a  slip  of  paper,  upon  which  the 
customer  had  written  the  address  of  the  place  to 
which  he  wished  the  stamp  sent — The  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association!  The  face  of  the  fragment 
showed  a  part  of  the  maker's  signature.  The  super- 
intendent ran  his  eye  over  a  list  of  brokers  and  picked 
out  the  name  of  the  firm  most  like  the  hieroglyphics 
on  the  check.  Then  he  telephoned  over  and  asked  to 
be  permitted  to  see  their  pay  roll.  Carefully  com- 
paring the  signature  appearing  thereon  with  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  slip,  he  picked  his  man  in  less  than  ten 
minutes.  The  latter  was  carefully  trailed  to  his 
home,  and  thence  to  the  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation, after  which  he  called  on  his  fiancee  at  her 
father's  house.  He  spent  the  night  at  his  own  board- 
ing place.  Next  morning  (Sunday)  he  was  arrested 
on  his  way  to  church,  and  all  the  securities  (except 
some  that  he  later  returned)  were  discovered  in  his 
room.  More  quick  work!  The  amateur's  method 
had  been  very  simple.  He  knew  that  the  loan  had 
been  made  and  the  bonds  sent  to  the  bank.  So  he 
forged  a  check,  certified  it  himself,  and  collected  the 
securities.  Of  course,  he  was  a  bungler  and  took  a 
hundred  rash  chances. 
A  good  example  of  the  value  of  the  accumulated 


136         DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

information—documentary,  pictorial,  and  otherwise — 
in  the  possession  of  an  agency  was  the  capture  of 
Charles  Wells,  more  generally  known  as  Charles 
Fisher,  alias  Henry  Conrad,  an  old-time  forger,  who 
suddenly  resumed  his  activities  after  being  released 
from  a  six-year  term  in  England.  A  New  York  City 
bank  had  paid  on  a  bogus  two  hundred  and  fifty  dol- 
lar check  and  had  reported  its  loss  to  the  agency  in 
question.  The  superintendent  examined  the  check 
and  (although  Fisher  had  been  in  confinement  for  six 
years  on  the  other  side)  spotted  it  for  his  work.  The 
next  step  was  to  find  the  forger.  Of  course,  no  man 
who  does  the  actual  "scratching"  attempts  to  "lay 
down ' '  the  paper.  That  task  is  up  to  the ' '  presenter. ' ' 
The  cashier  of  the  bank  identified  in  the  agency's 
gallery  the  picture  of  the  man  who  had  brought  in 
the  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollar  check,  and  he  in 
turn  proved  to  be  another  ex-convict  well  known  in 
the  business,  whose  whereabouts  in  New  York  were 
not  difficult  to  ascertain.  He  was  "located"  and 
"trailed"  and  all  his  associates  noted  and  followed. 
In  due  course  he  "connected  up"  (as  they  say)  with 
Fisher.  Now,  it  is  one  thing  to  follow  a  man  who 
has  no  idea  that  he  is  being  followed  and  another  to 
.trail  a  man  who  is  as  suspicious  and  elusive  as  a  fox. 
A  professional  criminars  daily  business  is  to  observe 
whether  or  not  he  is  being  followed,  and  he  rarely 
if  ever,  makes  a  direct  move.  If  he  wants  a  drink  at 
the  saloon  across  the  street,  he  will,  by  preference,  go 
out  the  back  door,  walk  around  the  block  and  dodge 
in  the  side  entrance  via  the  tail  of  an  ice  wagon.  In 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT         137 

this"  case  the  detectives  followed  the  presenter  for 
days  before  they  reached  Fisher,  and  when  they  did 
they  had  still  to  locate  his  "plant." 

The  arrest  in  this  case  illustrates  forcibly  the  chief 
characteristic  of  successful  criminals — egotism.  The 
essential  quality  of  daring  required  in  their  pursuits 
gives  them  an  extraordinary  degree  of  self-confidence, 
boldness,  and  vanity.  And  to  vanity  most  of  them 
can  trace  their  fall.  It  seems  incredible  that  Fisher 
should  have  returned  to  the  United  States  after  his 
discharge  from  prison  and  immediately  resumed  his 
operations  without  carefully  concealing  his  impedi- 
menta. Yet  when  he  was  run  down  in  a  twenty-six 
family  apartment  house,  the  detectives  found  in  his 
valise  several  thousand  blank  and  model  checks,  hun- 
dreds of  letters  and  private  papers,  a  work  on  "Mod- 
ern Bank  Methods,"  and  his  "ticket  of  leave"  from 
England!  This  man  was  a  successful  forger  and  be- 
cause he  was  successful,  his  pride  in  himself  was  so 
great  that  he  attributed  his  conviction  in  England  to 
accident  and  really  felt  that  he  was  immune  on  his 
release. 

The  arrest  of  such  a  man  often  presents  great  legal 
difficulties  which  the  detectives  overcome  by  various 
practical  methods.  There  is  no  man  in  the  world 
who  "gets  away"  with  so  many  "tricks"  on  his 
"chest"  as  the  sleuth.  As  they  say,  "7^s  the  way  we 
do  it."  Of  course,  no  officer  without  a  search  war- 
rant has  a  right  to  enter  a  house  or  an  apartment.  A 
man's  house  is  his  castle.  Mayor  Gaynor,  when  a 
judge,  in  a  famous  opinion  (more  familiarly  known 


138          DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

in  the  lower  world  even  than  the  Decalogue)  laid 
down  the  law  unequivocally  and  emphatically  in 
this  regard.  Thus,  in  the  Fisher  case,  the  defendant 
having  been  arrested  on  the  street,  the  detectives  de- 
sired to  search  the  apartment  of  the  family  with 
which  he  lived.  They  did  this  by  first  inducing  the 
tenant  to  open  the  door  and,  after  satisfying 
themselves  that  they  were  in  the  right  place,  order- 
ing the  occupants  to  get  in  line  and  "march'7  from 
one  room  to  another  while  they  rummaged  for 
evidence.  "Of  course,  we  had  no  right  to  do 
it,  but  they  didn't  know  we  hadn't!"  said  the 
boss. 

But  frequently  the  defendant  knows  his  rights  just 
as  well  as  the  police.  On  one  occasion  the  same  de- 
tective who  arrested  Fisher  wanted  to  take  another 
man  out  of  an  apartment  where  he  had  been  run  to 
earth.  His  mother  (aged  eighty-two  years)  put  the 
chain  on  the  door  and  politely  instructed  the  detec- 
tive (who  had  no  warrant)  to  go  to  purgatory.  All 
the  evidence  against  the  forger  was  inside  the  apart- 
ment and  he  was  actively  engaged  in  burning  it  up 
in  the  kitchen  stove.  In  half  an  hour  to  arrest  him 
would  have  been  useless!  The  detectives  stormed 
and  threatened,  but  the  old  crone  merely  grinned  at 
them.  She  hated  a  "bull"  as  much  as  did  her  son. 
Fearing  to  take  the  law  into  their  own  hands,  they 
summoned  a  detective  sergeant  from  head-quarters, 
but,  although  he  sympathized  with  them,  he  had  read 
Mayor  Gaynor's  decision  and  declined  to  take  any 
chances.  They  then  "appealed"  to  the  cop  on  the 


DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT          139 

beat,  who  proved  more  reasonable,  but  although  he 
used  all  his  force,  he  was  unable  to  break  down  the 
door  which  had  in  the  meantime  been  reinforced 
from  the  inside.  After  about  an  hour,  the  old  lady 
unchained  the  door  and  invited  the  detectives  to 
come  in.  The  crook  was  sitting  by  the  window  smok- 
ing a  cigar  and  reading  St.  Nicholas,  while  all  evidence 
of  his  crime  had  vanished  in  smoke. 

One  more  anecdote  at  the  expense  of  the  deduc- 
tive detective.  A  watchman  was  murdered,  the 
safe  of  a  brewery  blown  open  and  the  contents 
stolen.  Local  detectives  worked  on  the  case  and 
satisfied  themselves  that  the  night  engineer  at  the 
brewery  had  committed  the  crime.  He  was  a  quiet 
and,  apparently,  a  God-fearing  man,  but  circum- 
stances were  conclusive  against  him.  In  fact,  he 
had  been  traced  within  ten  minutes  of  the  mur- 
der on  the  way  to  the  scene  of  the  homicide.  But 
some  little  link  was  lacking  and  the  brewery  officials 
called  in  the  agency.  The  first  thing  the  superin- 
tendent did  was  to  look  over  the  engineer.  At  first 
sight  he  recognized  him  as  a  famous  crook  who  had 
served  five  years  for  a  homicidal  assault !  One  would 
think  that  that  would  have  settled  the  matter.  But 
it  didn't!  The  detective  said  nothing  to  his  asso- 
ciates or  employers,  but  called  on  the  engineer  that 
evening  and  had  a  quiet  talk  with  him  in  which  he 
satisfied  himself  that  the  man  was  entirely  innocent. 
The  man  had  served  his  time,  turned  over  a  new  leaf, 
and  was  leading  an  honest,  decent  life.  Two  months 
later  the  superintendent  caused  the  arrest  of  four 


140          DETECTIVES  WHO  DETECT 

yeggmen,  all  of  whom  were  convicted  and  are  now 
serving  fifteen  years  each  for  the  crime. 

Thus,  the  reader  will  observe  that  there  are  just 
a  few  more  real  detectives  still  left  in  the  business — 
if  you  can  find  them.  Incidentally,  they,  one  and 
all,  take  off  their  hats  to  Scotland  Yard.  They  will 
tell  you  that  the  Englishman  may  be  slow  (fancy  an 
American  inspector  of  police  wearing  gray  suede 
gloves  and  brewing  himself  a  dish  of  tea  in  his  office 
at  four  o'clock!),  but  that  once  he  goes  after  a  crook 
he  is  bound  to  get  him — it  is  merely  a  question  of 
time.  I  may  add  that  in  the  opinion  of  the  heads  of 
the  big  agencies  the  percentage  of  ability  in  the  New 
York  Detective  Bureau  is  high — one  of  them  going 
so  far  as  to  claim  that  fifty  per  cent  of  the  men  have 
real  detective  ability — that  is  to  say  "brains."  That 
is  rather  a  higher  average  than  one  finds  among 
clergymen  and  lawyers,  yet  it  may  be  so. 


THE  CAMORRA 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

We  are  not  Carabinieri, 
We  are  not  Royalists, 
But  we  are  Camorrists — 
The  devil  take  the  others! 

IN  Italy,  when  it  rains,  the  man  on  the  street  mut- 
ters: "Piove!  Governo  ladro!"  (It  rains!  Thief  of 
a  government!'7)  Oddly  enough,  this  expression, 
originally  coined  by  the  Fanfulla,  an  influential  jour- 
nal, to  ridicule  the  opponents  of  the  government, 
really  epitomizes  the  attitude  of  the  average  Italian 
toward  the  central  authority.  It  is  the  vital  word 
spoken  in  jest.  The  Italian — and  particularly  the 
Italian  of  the  southern  peninsula — is  against  govern- 
ment— any  government,  all  government — on  gen- 
eral principles.  He  and  his  forefathers  went  through 
a  grim  school,  and  they  have  not  forgotten. 

The  Italian,  however  republican  in  form  his  insti- 
tutions may  be,  is  still  the  subject  of  a  monarchy, 
and  he  has  never  fully  grasped  the  Anglo-Saxon  idea 
that  even  a  king  is  subject  to  the  law.  In  Italy  no 
one  thinks  of  questioning  the  legality  of  an  arrest. 
With  us,  to  do  so  is  the  first  thought  that  comes.  On 
the  Continent,  the  fact  that  an  act  is  done  by  an 
official,  by  a  man  in  striped  trousers,  places  it  above 
criticism.  No  matter  how  obvious  an  error  may  have 

143 


144  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

been  committed,  one  is  inevitably  met  by  the  placid 
assertion:  "The  government  makes  no  mistakes." 
Neither  has  the  idea  of  the  sanctity  of  personal  liberty 
ever  been  properly  developed.  There  is  no  habeas 
corpus  in  Italy.  Release  on  bail  is  legally  possible, 
but  difficult  of  achievement  and  little  availed  of.  A 
man's  house  is  not  "his  castle."  The  law  itself  is 
usually  complicated  and  slow  in  remedial  and  crim- 
inal matters,  and  justice  is  apt  to  be  blind  unless  the 
right  sort  of  eye  doctor — a  deputy  or  a  senator — is 
called  in.  Bureaucracy  has  perpetuated  the  Italian's 
inherited  distrust  of  government  and  distaste  for 
legal  process,  and  drives  him  still  to  seek  his  ends 
in  many  cases  by  influence,  bribery,  or — the  Camorra. 

Rarely  can  we  point  to  a  social  phenomenon  in 
this  country  and  say:  "This  is  so  because  of  some- 
thing a  hundred  years  ago."  With  us  some  one  has 
an  idea,  and  presto!  we  are  recalling  judges,  pulling 
down  idols,  "elevating"  women  to  be  sheriffs,  and 
playing  golf  on  Sundays.  Where  are  the  gods  of  yes- 
terday? The  pulse  of  the  nation  leaps  at  a  single 
click  of  the  Morse  code!  An  injustice  in  Oklahoma 
brings  a  mass  meeting  together  in  Carnegie  Hall.  But 
the  continuance  of  the  Camorra  in  Italy  to-day  is 
directly  due  to  the  succession  of  tyrants  who  about 
a  century  ago  allowed  the  patriots  of  Naples  and 
Sicily  to  rot  in  prison  or  hung  them  up  on  scaffolds 
in  the  public  squares. 

The  Bourbon  rule  in  the  "Kingdom  of  the  Two 
Sicilies  "  *  was  one  of  the  most  despicable  in  history. 

*  Naples  and  Sicily  were  united  under  that  name  in  1734. 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  145 

In  eleven  days  in  1793  one  hundred  and  twenty  pro- 
fessors, physicians,  and  priests  were  executed  by  the 
public  hangman  in  Naples.  This  was  a  mere  fore- 
taste of  what  was  coming.  When  Napoleon  de- 
throned the  Bourbons  in  1805  and  made  his  brother 
Joseph  "King  of  Naples,"  there  dawned  an  era  of 
enlightenment  and  reform  which  continued  when 
Joseph  was  succeeded  by  Joachim  Murat  in  1808; 
but  the  Congress  of  Vienna  in  1815  reinstated  the 
old  dynasty  and  recalled  Ferdinand  I,  who  had  been 
lurking  in  Sardinia,  to  the  throne.  Then  the  horrors 
began  again.  A  period  of  retrogression,  of  wholesale 
persecutions  and  executions,  followed.  Never  was 
there  anything  like  the  nightmare  of  bloody  politics 
which  lasted  through  the  reigns  of  Ferdinand  I  (1825), 
of  Francis  I  (1830),  of  Ferdinand  II  (1859),  and  of  Fran- 
cis II,  until  the  entry  of  Garibaldi  into  Naples  in  1860. 
The  oppressions  of  the  Bourbons  and  the  struggle 
of  the  patriots  of  Italy  for  freedom  and  the  Risorgi- 
mento  stimulated  secret  organization.  No  other 
means  to  combat  tyranny  was,  in  fact,  possible.  To 
be  known  to  have  liberal  ideas  meant  instant  arrest, 
if  not  death.  Under  Ferdinand  II  there  had  been 
over  twenty  thousand  political  prisoners  actually  in 
prison  at  one  time  and  thirty  thousand  more  attend- 
ibili,  confined  in  their  houses.*  The  governor  of 
Genoa  complained  to  Mazzini's  father  because  the 
youth  "walked  by  himself  at  night,  absorbed  in 
thought."  Said  he:  "We  don't  like  young  people 

*G.  M.  Trevelyan,  "Garibaldi  and  the  Thousand,"  c.  iii,  p.  45. 
De  Cesares  F.  di  P.,  p.  bdx. 


146  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

thinking  without  knowing  the  subject  of  their 
thoughts."  The  great  society  of  the  Carbonari  had 
provoked  the  counter-organization  of  the  Calderoni, 
and  had  in  turn  given  way  to  the  "New  Italy"  of 
Mazzini.  It  is  said  on  excellent  authority  that  in 
1820  there  were  seventy  thousand  persons  in  the  city 
of  Naples  alone  who  belonged  to  secret  societies.  In 
this  year  we  first  hear  of  the  Camorra  by  name,  and 
for  the  next  forty  years  it  spread  and  flourished  until 
it  became  so  powerful  that  the  government  of  the 
"Two  Sicilies"  had  perforce  to  enter  into  treaty  with 
it  and  finally  (in  1860)  to  turn  over  to  it  the  policing 
of  the  city  of  Naples.  Indeed,  it  may  be  that  some 
such  extra-legal  organization  was  a  practical  neces- 
sity if  existence  were  to  be  tolerable  at  all. 

Lombroso,  in  the  "Growth  of  Crime,"  writes: 
"When  the  royal  postal  officials  were  in  the  habit  of 
tampering  with  correspondence,  when  the  police  were 
bent  on  arresting  the  honest  patriots  and  making  use 
of  thieves  as  agents  provocateurs,  the  necessity  of 
things  enhanced  the  value  of  the  Camorra,  which 
could  always  have  a  letter  or  a  packet  safely  con- 
veyed, save  you  from  a  dagger  thrust  in  prison, 
redeem  you  a  stolen  article  for  a  fair  sum,  or,  when 
quarrels  and  disputes  arose,  could  get  these  settled 
on  much  more  equitable  terms  and  less  costly  than 
any  one  else  or  indeed  the  ordinary  process  of  the  law. ' ' 

This  was  the  heyday  of  the  Camorra  as  an  organ- 
ization of  criminals.  Later  it  developed  into  some- 
thing more — a  political  ring  under  whose  leash  the 
back  of  southern  Italy  still  quivers. 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  147 

The  Neapolitan  Camorra  had  its  origin  in  Spain. 
The  great  Cervantes,  in  "Rinconeto  y  Contadillo," 
has  drawn  a  marvellous  picture  of  a  brotherhood  of 
thieves  and  malefactors  who  divided  their  evil  profits 
with  the  police  and  clergy.  This  was  "La  Garduna" 
— the  mother  of  the  Camorra.  As  early  as  1417  it 
had  rules,  customs,  and  officers  identical  with  those 
of  the  Camorra  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and,  like 
it,  flourished  in  the  jails,  which  were  practically  under 
its  control.  Undoubtedly  this  organization  found  its 
way  into  Sicily  and  Naples  in  the  wake  of  the  Span- 
ish occupation  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and  ger- 
minated in  the  loathsome  prisons  of  the  period  until 
it  was  ready  to  burst  forth  into  open  activity  under 
the  Bourbons. 

The  word  camorra  comes  from  the  Spanish  chamarra 
(in  Italian  gamurra,  hence  tabarra,  tabarrd)j  meaning 
a  "cloak"  usually  affected  by  thieves  and  bullies. 
From  this  is  derived  the  Spanish  word  camorra,  "a 
quarrel  with  fists,"  and  the  phrase  hacer  camorra, 
fairly  translatable  as  "  to  look  for  trouble."  It  would 
be  difficult  to  find  any  closer  definition  than  this  last 
of  the  business  of  the  Neapolitan  Camorra. 

Giuseppi  Alongi,  a  pupil  and  follower  of  Lombroso, 
and  one  of  the  principal  Italian  authorities  upon  the 
subject,  says  concerning  the  rise  of  the  Neapolitan 
organization : 

"The  Camorra  certainly  had  its  birth  in  the  prisons 
of  Naples.  Old  offenders  regarded  themselves  as 
aristocrats  of  crime,  and  behaved  as  masters  in  their 
own  households,  forming  a  sort  of  privileged  class 


148  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

within  the  prison.  The  idea  of  levying  taxes  on  new- 
comers came  as  natural  to  them  as  that  among  soldiers 
of  calling  upon  the  recruit  to  'pay  his  footing/  That 
the  Neapolitan  Camorra  is  so  mixed  up  with  religion 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  local  criminal  unites  ferocity 
with  religious  superstition,  while  the  amazing  devo- 
tion of  the  population  to  'Our  Lady  of  Mount  Car- 
mel/  who  is  venerated  as  the  symbol  of  maternal 
love,  offers  an  easy  means  of  exploiting  their  credulity. 
It  became  the  custom,  therefore,  to  exact  tolls  from 
the  people,  under  the  pretence  that  they  were  in- 
tended for  religious  purposes.  The  Camorrists  have 
four  hundred  feasts  every  year,  and  the  Church 
of  Mount  Carmel  in  Naples  is  still  their  religious 
centre." 

In  the  days  from  1820  to  1860,  to  be  a  Camorrist 
was  a  matter  of  pride  and  a  rare  distinction  among 
the  baser  sort.  So  far  from  concealing  his  member- 
ship in  it,  the  Camorrista  vaunted  it  abroad,  even 
affecting  a  peculiar  costume  which  rendered  him  un- 
mistakable. A  red  necktie,  the  loose  ends  of  which 
floated  over  either  shoulder,  a  parti-colored  sash,  and 
a  cane  heavily  loaded  with  brass  rings,  marked  him 
as  a  "bad  man"  during  this  romantic  period.  But, 
however  picturesque  it  may  have  been,  the  Camorra 
soon  became  the  most  dreaded  and  loathsome  secret 
society  in  the  world. 

Only  those  could  become  members  who  had  shown 
their  preference  for  the  mala  vita  and  given  tangible 
evidence  of  their  criminality.  Candidates  who  had 
qualified  for  the  novitiate  proved  their  suitability  for 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  149 

the  next  grade  by  performing  some  brutal  act,  such 
as  slitting  an  old  man's  throat  from  ear  to  ear. 

The  business  of  the  Camorra  was  organized  extor- 
tion, assisted  by  murder  and  violence.  The  Camorrist 
was  a  bully — one  who  could  use  the  knife.  In  this  he 
was  instructed  until  he  became  a  master  in  artistic 
stabbing  with  a  fair  knowledge  of  anatomy.  Various 
styles  of  knives  were  used  for  different  purposes:  the 
settesoldi,  for  scarring  and  unimportant  duelling 
among  members;  the  'o  zumpafuosso,  or  deadly  offi- 
cial knife,  for  the  "jumping  duel";  the  triangolo  for 
murders,  etc.  The  actual  slashing  was  usually  done 
not  by  the  Camorrist  himself,  but  by  some  aspirant 
to  membership  in  the  society  who  desired  to  give 
proof  of  his  virtue,  and  who,  rather  as  a  favor,  was 
permitted  to  take  all  the  chances.  Accordingly  the 
"honored"  youth  selected  the  right  knife  and  lay  m 
wait  for  his  victim,  assisted  by  a  polo,  or  "stall," 
who  gave  warning  of  danger  and  perhaps  arranged 
for  the  victim  to  stumble  just  as  the  blow  was  to  be 
struck.  Secret  signals  facilitated  matters.  Even  to- 
day, the  American  in  Naples  who  is  not  "afraid  to 
go  home  in  the  dark"  had  best  hasten  his  steps  if  he 
hears  near  by  the  bark  of  a  dog,  the  mew  of  a  cat, 
the  crow  of  a  cock,  or  a  sneeze,  any  one  of  which  does 
not  carry  conviction  as  to  its  genuine  character. 
These  are  all  common  Camorrist  signals  of  attack; 
while  popular  tunes  such  as  "Oi  ne',  traseteve,  ca 
chiora!"  ("Go  in,rfor  it  rains!")  are  warnings  of  the 
approach  of  danger. 

The  Camorra  levied  blackmail  upon  all  gambling 


150  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

enterprises,  brothels,  drivers  of  public  vehicles,  boat- 
men, beggars,  prostitutes,  thieves,  waiters,  porters, 
marketmen,  fruit-sellers,  small  tradesmen,  lottery 
winners,  and  pawnbrokers,  controlled  all  the  smug- 
gling and  coined  bogus  money;  and  the  funds  thus 
secured  were  divided  among  (1)  the  police,  (2)  the 
members  in  jail,  (3)  the  aged,  (4)  widows  and  orphans 
of  those  who  had  died  in  the  cause  of  crime,  (5)  the 
higher  officers,  (6)  whatever  saint  or  shrine  it  was 
desired  to  propitiate,  and  (7)  the  "screenings"  went 
to  the  men  who  did  the  dirty  work. 

TheCamorrists  made  use  of  picture  signs  for  names, 
and  a  secret  symbolism  to  express  their  meanings, 
written  or  spoken.  They  also  had  an  argot,  or  dialect, 
which  has  impressed  itself  upon  the  language  of  the 
entire  lower  class  of  Naples.  All  criminals  have  a 
jargon  of  their  own,  often  picturesque,  frequently  hu- 
morous, and  the  slang  of  the  Camorrist  differed  little 
from  that  of  other  associations  of  crooks  here  and 
elsewhere,  save  in  its  greater  volume.  Much  of  the 
Camorrist  vocabulary  has  passed  into  common  use, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  determine  now  what  words  are 
of  strictly  Camorristic  origin,  although  the  following 
are  supposed  to  be  so : 

Freddare,  "to  turn  a  man  cold"  (to  kill). 

Agnello,  "lamb"  (victim). 

II  morto,  "the  dead  one"  (one  robbed). 

La  Misericordia,   "Compassion"    (combination   knife   and 

dagger). 

Bocca,  "mouth"  (pistol). 
Tric-trac  (revolver). 
Sorei  neri,  "black  rats"  (night  patrol). 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  151 

Asparago*  "asparagus"  (a  gendarme  who  has  been  tricked 

—"a  stiff"). 
Si  accolla,  "he  sticks  to  it"  (he  shoulders  the  others'  crime). 

In  all  there  are  said  to  be  about  five  thousand 
words  in  the  Camorrist  vocabulary;  but  a  large  num- 
ber of  these  are  simply  Neapolitan  slang,  for  invent- 
ing which  every  Neapolitan  has  a  gift. 

No  more  interesting  example  of  this  slang  has  ever 
come  to  light  than  in  the  secret  diary  of  Tobia  Basile 
(nicknamed  "Scarpia  Leggia")  who,  after  serving 
thirty  years  in  prison,  returned  to  the  haunts  of 
men  to  teach  the  picciotti  the  forms  and  ceremonies 
of  the  society  and  to  instruct  them  in  its  secret  lan- 
guage. This  strange  old  man,  more  literate  than 
most  Camorrists,  kept  a  diary  in  the  ancient  symbol- 
ism of  the  brotherhood.  Having  become  bored  by 
his  wife  he  murdered  her,  walled  her  body  up  in  the 
kitchen,  and  recorded  what  he  had  done,  thus: 

May  1,  "The  violets  are  out." 

May  7,  "Water  to  the  beans." 

June  11,  "I  have  pruned  my  garden." 

Aug.  10,  "  How  beautiful  is  the  sun." 

Sept.  12,  "  So  many  fine  sheep  are  passing." 

Time  passed,  and  a  contractor,  rebuilding  the  wall, 
came  upon  the  corpse.  Tobia  denied  his  guilt,  but 
his  diary  was  found,  as  well  as  a  Camorrist  translator. 
"Water  to  the  beans."  That  beautiful  metaphor 
was  shown  to  mean  naught  else  but  "I  have  killed 
and  buried  her!"  And  in  the  face  of  his  own  diary 

*  Compare  the  Florentine  caros/o  "artichoke"  for  gendarme. 


152  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

Tobia  admitted  the  accuracy  of  his  record.  "Water 
to  the  beans!" 

The  first  grade  of  aspirants  to  the  Camorra-was 
that  of  the  gar  zone  di  mala  vita,  or  "  apprentice, " 
who  was  practically  a  servant,  errand-boy,  or  valet 
for  his  masters  or  sponsors,  and  was  known  as  a 
giovine  onorato,  or  honored  youth.  The  second  grade 
was  that  of  the  picdott  'i  sggarOj  or  novice,  originally 
difficult  of  attainment  and  often  requiring  from  six 
to  ten  years  of  service.  The  third  or  final  stage  was 
that  of  the  capo  paranza,  head  of  a  local  gang,  or 
"district  leader." 

The  society  was  divided  into  twelve  centres,  cor- 
responding to  the  twelve  quarters  of  the  city  of 
Naples,  each  centre  being,  in  turn,  subdivided  into 
paranze  and  having  a  separate  or  individual  purse. 
The  chief  of  each  paranza  was  elected,  and  was  the 
strongest  or  boldest  man  in  the  gang.  In  earlier  days 
he  combined  the  office  of  president,  which  carried 
with  it  only  the  limited  authority  to  call  meetings, 
with  that  of  cashier,  which  involved  the  advantage 
of  being  able  to  divide  the  caworm,  or  proceeds  of 
crime.  The  leader  was  entitled  himself  to  the  sbruffo, 
a  percentage  due  by  "right  of  camorra";  and  this 
percentage  belongs  to-day  in  every  case  to  the  Ca- 
morrist  who  has  planned  or  directed  the  particular 
crime  involved.  The  leaders  of  the  twelve  divisions 
met,  just  as  they  occasionally  do  now,  to  discuss 
affairs  of  vital  importance,  but  in  most  matters  the 
individual  sections  were  autonomous. 

According  to  the  confession  of  an  old  Camorrist, 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  153 

the  lowest  grade  of  the  society  was  attained  by  the 
following  rite: 

A  general  meeting  of  the  district  was  called,  at 
which  the  sponsor  formally  introduced  the  candidate 
to  the  gathering.  The  leader  stood  in  the  midst  of 
his  fellow  Camorrists,  all  of  whom  where  drawn  up 
in  a  circle  according  to  seniority.  If  the  treasurer 
was  present  the  president  had  three  votes,  and  the 
assembly  was  known  in  Camorrist  slang  as  being  cap9 
in  trino — three  in  one:  if  absent,  the  society  was 
known  as  cap*  in  testa,  which  means  "the  supreme 
triad."  All  stood  perfectly  motionless,  with  arms 
folded  across  their  breasts  and  with  bowed  heads. 
The  president,  addressing  the  neophyte,  said: 

"Knowest  thou  the  conditions  and  what  thou  must 
do  to  become  an  honored  youth?  Thou  wilt  endure 
misfortune  upon  misfortune,  thou  wilt  be  obliged  to 
obey  all  the  orders  of  the  novices  and  the  solemn- 
ly professed,  and  bring  them  useful  gains  to  furnish 
them  with  useful  service." 

To  this  the  neophyte  replies: 

"  Did  I  not  wish  to  suffer  adversities  and  hardships, 
I  should  not  have  troubled  the  society." 

After  a  favorable  vote  on  the  admission  of  the  can- 
didate, he  was  led  forward  and  permitted  to  kiss  each 
member  once  upon  the  mouth.  The  president  he 
kissed  twice.  Certain  favors  were  then  asked  of  the 
assembly  by  the  neophyte,  and  the  president  made 
reply : 

"The  favors  asked  shall  be  accorded  according  to 
our  rules.  Our  terms  of  membership  are  these: 


154  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

"First:  That  thou  go  not  singing  or  rowing  or 
brawling  in  the  public  streets. 

"Secondly:  That  thou  respect  the  novices  and 
whatsoever  instructions  they  may  give  thee. 

"Thirdly:  That  thou  obey  whole-heartedly  our 
professed  members  and  carry  out  their  commissions." 

After  a  few  tests  of  the  candidate  he  was  handed 
over  to  the  "novice  master/7  a  full-fledged  mem- 
ber under  whom  he  was  to  serve  his  term  of  probation. 
The  period  of  his  apprenticeship  depended  upon  the 
zeal,  ability,  and  ready  obedience  which  he  displayed 
in  the  course  of  it.  He  was  absolutely  at  the  mercy 
of  his  master,  and  if  so  commanded  he  must  substi- 
tute himself  for  another  and  take  the  latter's  crimes 
upon  his  own  shoulders;  but  one  who  thus  made  of 
himself  a  "martyr"  was  promoted  to  a  higher  grade 
in  the  society. 

Promotion  to  such  higher  grades  involved  stricter 
examination  and  the  Camorrist  admonition: 

"Shouldst  thou  see  even  thine  own  father  stab  a 
companion  or  one  of  the  brethren,  thou  art  bound  to 
defend  thy  comrade  at  the  cost  of  stabbing  or  wound- 
ing thy  father;  and  God  help  thee  shouldst  thou 
traffic  with  traitors  and  spies!" 

Standing  with  one  foot  in  the  galleys  and  the  other 
in  the  grave  (symbolically),  he  swore  to  kill  anybody, 
even  himself,  should  that  be  the  wish  of  the  society. 
The  kissing  ceremony  was  then  renewed,  and  the 
candidate  was  initiated  fully  into  the  secrets  of  the 
organization.  The  number  of  weapons  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Camorra  was  revealed  to  him,  the  names 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  155 

of  brethren  under  the  ban  of  suspicion,  the  names  of 
all  novices  and  postulants,  as  well  as  the  society  pass- 
word and  the  code  of  recognition  signs. 

These  points  of  ritual  passed,  the  candidate  was 
then  ready  for  the  blood  ceremony,  which  consisted 
in  tasting  the  blood  of  each  member  of  the  assembly, 
drawn  from  a  small  knife-wound  made  for  the  pur- 
pose, and  finally  the  combat.  For  this  necessary 
part  of  the  ceremony  of  initiation,  the  candidate  was 
required  to  select  an  opponent  from  the  assembly. 
The  champions  then  chose  their  daggers,  picked  their 
seconds,  unshirted  themselves — and  the  fight  was  on. 
It  was  a  rule  that  they  must  aim  only  at  the  muscles 
of  the  arm,  and  the  president,  acting  as  capo  di  ti- 
ranta  (master  of  combat)  was  there  to  see  that  the 
rule  was  obeyed.  At  the  first  drawing  of  blood  the 
combat  was  over,  and  the  victor  was  brought  for- 
ward to  suck  the  blood  of  the  wound  and  embrace 
his  adversary.  If  the  newly  promoted  member 
happened  to  be  the  loser,  he  had  to  resume  the 
fight  later  on  with  another  champion;  and  not  until 
he  had  won  in  a  test  was  he  definitely  "  passed " 
and  "raised." 

Many  other  bloody  tests  have  been  attributed  to 
this  ceremony  of  the  Camorra;  but  these,  as  well  as 
the  foregoing  in  its  strict  form,  have  been  largely 
done  away  with,  except  in  the  prisons,  where  the  so- 
ciety still  retains  its  formality.  There  remained,  as 
a  final  step  in  the  ritual  of  initiation,  the  tattooing 
of  two  hearts  joined  together  with  two  keys.  "Men 
of  honor  ought  to  have  heart  enough  for  two  people, 
that  is  to  say,  have  a  large  heart;  men  bound  only 


156          THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

to  their  colleagues  and  whose  heart  is  closed  as  it  were 
with  a  double  key  to  all  others."  Sometimes  a  spider 
took  the  place  of  the  hearts,  symbolizing  the  industry 
of  the  Camorrist  and  the  silence  with  which  he  weaves 
the  web  around  his  victim.  This  tattooing  is  still 
customary  among  Camorrists. 

The  usual  Camorrist  tribunal  consisted  of  a  com- 
mittee of  three  members  belonging  to  the  district  or- 
ganization, presided  over  by  the  Camorrist  of  highest 
rank  among  them,  and  settled  ordinary  disputes  and 
punishments.  From  this  there  was  an  appeal  in  more 
important  matters  to  the  central  committee  of  twelve. 
This  latter  body  elected  a  supreme  head  for  the  entire 
society,  and  passed  on  matters  of  general  policy.  It 
also  sat  as  a  court  of  original  and  final  jurisdiction 
in  cases  of  treachery  to  the  society,  such  as  betray- 
ing its  secrets  or  embezzling  its  funds,  imposed  the 
death  penalty,  and  appointed  the  executioners.  Its 
decrees  were  carried  out  with  blind  obedience,  al- 
though not  infrequently  the  death  sentence  was  com- 
muted to  that  of  disfiguration. 

Such,  then,  was  the  society  which  in  1820  already 
controlled  the  prisons,  dealt  in  assassination  and  rob- 
bery, levied  blackmail  upon  all  classes,  trafficked  in 
every  sort  of  depravity,  and  had  a  rank  and  file  upon 
which  its  leaders  could  absolutely  rely.  It  had  no 
political  creed,  nor  did  it  interest  itself  in  anything 
except  crime.  It  had  greater  solidarity  than  the  po- 
lice, which  was  almost  equally  corrupt.  Dreaded  by 
all,  it  was  utilized  by  all,  for  it  could  do  that  which 
the  police  could  not  do. 

The  city  officials  of  Naples  had  a  very  /tender  re- 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  157 

gard  for  the  feelings  of  "the  brethren  of  the  dagger." 
In  1829  certain  reformers  proposed  building  a  wall 
around  a  notoriously  evil  street,  so  that  at  night, 
under  lock  and  key,  the  inhabitants  could  be  properly 
"segregated."  But  the  Camorra  did  not  take  kindly 
to  the  suggestion,  and  a  letter  was  left  with  the  func- 
tionary in  charge  of  the  matter:  * 

NAPLES,  September,  1829. 
SIR: 

Are  you  not  aware  that  in  confining  these  poor  girls 
in  walls  you  act  as  if  they  were  condemned  to  the  lowest 
depths  of  hell?  The  prefect  of  police  and  the  intendant  who 
ordered  this  brutal  act  have  no  heart.  .  .  .  We  are  here  who 
have  much  heart  and  are  always  ready  to  shed  our  own  blood 
for  them,  and  to  cut  the  throats  of  those  who  shall  do  anything 
toward  walling  up  that  street.  With  all  humility  we  kiss  your 
hands.  N.  N. 

The  street  was  not  walled  up,  the  prefect  of  the 
police  discovering  that  he  had  too  much  heart. 

Having  no  politics,  the  Camorrists  became,  as  it 
were,  Hessians  in  politico-criminal  activity.  They 
were  loyal  only  to  themselves,  their  favorite  song 
being: 

"Nui  non  simmo  gravanari, 
Nui  non  simmo  realisti, 
Ma  nui  simmo  Camorristi, 
Cuffiano  a  chilli'  e  a  chistil" 

(We  are  not  Carabinieri, 
We  are  not  royalists, 
But  we  are  Camorrists — 
The  devil  take  the  others!) 

*H.  D.  Sedgwick,  "Letters  from  Italy." 


158  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

Under  the  Bourbons  the  police  recognized  and  used 
the  Camorra  as  their  secret  agents  and  granted  its 
members  immunity  in  return  for  information  and  as- 
sistance. Both  preyed  on  the  honest  citizen,  and 
existed  by  extortion  and  blackmail.  "The  govern- 
ment and  the  Camorra  hunted  with  one  leash."  Yet, 
because  the  police  were  regarded  as  the  instruments 
of  despotism,  the  people  came  to  look  upon  the  Ca- 
morrists  (who,  technically  at  least,  were  hostile  to 
authority)  as  allies  against  tyranny.  It  was  at  this 
period  of  Italian  history  that  the  present  distrust  of 
government  and  distaste  for  law  had  its  rise,  as  well 
as  the  popular  sympathy  for  all  victims  of  legal  proc- 
ess and  hatred  for  all  who  wear  the  uniform  of  the 
police.  The  Camorra  still  appeals  to  the  dread  of 
tyranny  in  the  heart  of  the  south  Italian  to  which  in 
large  measure,  by  its  complicity,  it  contributed.  Thus 
the  love  of  liberty  was  made  an  excuse  for  traffic  with 
criminals;  thus  was  fostered  the  omerta,  the  per- 
verted code  of  honor  which  makes  it  obligatory  upon 
a  victim  to  shield  his  assassin  from  the  law;  and  thus 
was  born  the  loathing  of  all  authority  which  still  ob- 
tains among  the  descendants  of  the  victims  of  Ferdi- 
nand's atrocious  system,  which,  whatever  their  ori- 
gin, gave  the  mala  vita — brigandage,  the  Mafia,  and 
the  Camorra — their  virulence  and  tenacity. 

In  1848  the  Camorra  had  become  so  powerful  that 
Ferdinand  II  actually  negotiated  with  it  for  support; 
but  the  society  demanded  too  much  in  return  and 
the  plan  fell  through.  On  this  account  the  Camorra 
threatened  to  bring  on  a  revolution!  In  this  it  was 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  159 

not  successful,  but  it  now  began  openly  to  affect  revo- 
lutionary ideas  and  pretend  to  be  the  friend  of  liberty, 
its  imprisoned  members  posing  as  patriots,  victims 
of  tyranny. 

Thus  it  gained  enormously  in  prestige  and  mem- 
bership, while  the  throne  became  less  and  less  secure. 
Ferdinand  II  granted  a  general  amnesty  in  order  to 
heighten  his  popularity,  and  the  Camorrists  who  had 
been  in  jail  now  had  to  be  reckoned  with  in  addition 
to  those  outside.  In  1859  Ferdinand  died  and  Fran- 
cis II  seated  himself  on  the  quaking  throne.  His  pre- 
fect of  police,  Liborio  Romano,  whom  history  has 
accused  of  plotting  the  Bourbon  overthrow  with  Gari- 
baldi and  of  playing  both  ends  against  the  middle, 
had  either  perforce  or  with  malice  prepense  conceived 
the  scheme  of  harnessing  the  Camorra  by  turning 
over  to  it  the  maintenance  of  order  in  the  city.  The 
police  had  become  demoralized  and  needed  rejuve- 
nating, he  said.  Francis  II  thereupon  had  another 
jail  delivery,  and  "Don  Liborio"  organized  a  "Na- 
tional Guard"  and  enlisted  throngs  of  Camorrists  in 
it,  while  in  the  gendarmerie  he  recruited  the  picdotti 
as  rank  and  file  and  installed  the  regular  Camorrists 
as  brigadiers. 

Then  came  the  news  that  Garibaldi  was  march- 
ing upon  Naples.  Romano,  still  ostensibly  acting 
for  the  best  interests  of  his  royal  master,  urged  the 
latter's  departure  from  the  capital.  The  revolution 
was  coming.  In  some  indefinable  way,  people  who 
were  for  the  Bourbons  yesterday  saw  to-day  the  im- 
possibility of  the  continuance  of  the  dynasty.  The 


160  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

cat  was  ready  to  jump,  but  it  had  not  jumped  yet. 
Whatever  may  have  been  Romano's  real  motives  so 
far  as  the  Bourbons  were  concerned,  the  fact  remains 
that  his  control  over  the  national  militia  and  police, 
during  the  days  and  nights  just  prior  to  the  depart- 
ure of  the  King  and  the  arrival  of  Garibaldi,  resulted 
in  a  vigilance  on  their  part  which  protected  prop- 
erty and  maintained  an  order  otherwise  impossible.* 
Garibaldi  at  last  arrived,  with  Romano's  Camorrist 
police  on  hand  to  cheer  loudly  for  "Victor  Emmanuel 
and  Italy  United!"  and  to  knock  on  the  head  or  stick 
a  knife  into  the  gizzard  of  any  one  who  seemed  luke- 
warm in  his  reception  of  the  conquering  hero.  The 
cat  jumped — assisted  by  the  Camorra.  The  liberals 
were  in,  and  with  them  the  Camorrists,  as  the  saying 
is,  "with  both  feet."  Thus,  perhaps  for  the  first  time 
in  history,  was  a  society  of  criminals  recognized  offi- 
cially by  the  government  and  intrusted  with  the  task 
of  policing  themselves. 

From  1860  on  the  Camorra  entered  upon  a  new 
phase,  a, sort  of  duplex  existence,  having  on  the  one 
hand  its  old  criminal  organization  (otherwise  known 
as  the  Camorra  basso)  and  on  the  other  a  group  of 
politicians  or  ring  with  wide-spread  ramifications, 
closely  affiliated  with  the  society  and  dealing  either 
directly  with  it  or  through  its  more  influential  and 
fashionable  members,  much  as  a  candidate  for  office 
in  New  York  might  have  secured  the  support  of  the 
"Paul  Kelly  Gang"  through  the  offices  of  the  poli- 
tician under  whose  patronage  it  existed.  This  "  smart 

*G.  M.  Trevelyan,  "Garibaldi  and  the  Thousand,"  c.  i.,  p.  19. 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  161 

set"  and  the  ring  connected  with  it  was  known  as 
the  Camorra  alia  or  Camorra  elegante,  and  from  the 
advent  of  Garibaldi  to  the  present  time  the  strictly 
criminal  operations  of  the  society  have  been  secondary 
in  importance  to  its  political  significance.  Its  mem- 
bers became  not  merely  crooks,  but  "protected" 
crooks,  since  they  gave  office  to  men  who  would  look 
after  them  in  return,  and  the  result  was  the  alliance 
of  politics  and  crime  in  the  political  history  of  South- 
ern Italy  during  the  last  fifty  years. 

It  is  hardly  likely  that  foxy  old  "  Don  Liborio  "  an- 
ticipated any  such  far-reaching  result  of  his  extraor- 
dinary manoeuvre  with  the  Camorra.  It  was  not 
many  weeks,  however,  before  the  Camorrists  who 
had  been  given  public  office  and  continued  under 
Garibaldi,  began  to  show  themselves  hi  their  true 
colors,  and  to  use  every  opportunity  for  blackmail  and 
private  vengeance.  They  had  been  given  charge  of 
the  octroi,  or  taxes  levied  at  the  city  gates,  and  these 
decreased,  under  Salvatore  di  Crescenza,  from  forty 
thousand  to  one  thousand  ducats  per  day.  Another 
Camorrist  collector,  Pasquale  Menotte,  had  the  ef- 
frontery to  turn  in,  on  one  occasion,  the  princely 
sum  of  exactly  four  cents.  It  became  absolutely 
necessary  to  get  rid  of  them  at  any  cost,  and  to  drive 
them  out  of  the  police  and  army,  which  they  now 
permeated.  Mild  measures  were  found  insufficient, 
and  as  early  as  1862  a  raid  was  conducted  by  the 
government  upon  the  organization — Sparenta,  the 
Minister  of  Police,  arresting  three  hundred  Camorrists 
in  one  day.  But  he  accomplished  little.  From  this 


162  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

time  on  until  1900  the  history  of  the  Camorra  is  that 
of  a  corrupt  political  ring  having  a  standing  army  of 
crooks  and  rascals  by  means  of  which  to  carry  out 
its  bargains. 

During  this  period  many  serious  attempts  were 
made  to  exterminate  it,  but  practically  to  no  pur- 
pose. In  1863  another  fruitless  series  of  raids  filled 
the  jails  of  Naples,  and  even  of  Florence  and  Turin, 
with  its  members;  but  the  society  continued  to 
flourish — less  openly.  The  resignation  of  Nicotera 
as  Prime  Minister  in  1876  was  followed  by  a  burst  of 
activity  among  the  Camorrists,  but  in  1877  the  gov- 
ernment made  a  serious  effort  to  put  down  the  Mafia 
in  Sicily,  while  in  1880  the  murder  of  Bonelli  in  a 
foul  dive  of  the  Camorra  in  Naples  resulted  in  the 
prosecution  of  five  Camorrists  for  his  murder.  The 
trial,  like  that  of  1911-12,  took  place,  for  reasons  of 
safety,  at  Viterbo.  The  witnesses  testified  freely 
upon  every  subject  save  the  Camorra,  and  could  not 
be  induced  to  suggest  that  the  assassination  had  been 
the  result  of  a  conspiracy.  "The  word  Camorra 
seemed  to  burn  their  tongues."  The  jury  were  so 
impressed  by  the  obvious  terror  which  the  society 
inspired  in  the  Neapolitans  that  they  found  all  the 
five — Esposito,  Romano,  Tiniscalchi,  Langella,  and 
Trombetta — guilty,  and  they  were  sentenced  to 
forced  labor  in  the  galleys. 

Apparently  there  was  a  sort  of  renaissance  of  the 
Camorra  about  1880,  at  the  death  of  Victor  Em- 
manuel II,  and  under  the  new  administration  of  Hum- 
bert it  began  to  be  increasingly  active  in  political 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  163 

affairs.  At  this  time  the  Camorra  alia  included  law- 
yers, magistrates,  school-teachers,  holders  of  high 
office,  and  even  cabinet  ministers.  The  writer  does 
not  mean  that  these  men  went  through  the  rites  of 
initiation  or  served  an  apprenticeship  with  the  knife, 
but  the  whole  villainous  power  of  the  Camorra  was 
at  their  backs,  and  they  utilized  it  as  they  saw  fit. 

The  "Ring,"  affiliated  as  it  is  with  the  leaders  of 
the  society,  is  still  the  most  dangerous  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Camorra.  Historically,  it  is  true,  it  was 
known  as  the  alia  Camorra  or  Camorra  elegante,  but 
in  ordinary  parlance  these  terms  are  generally  used 
to  describe  Camorrists  more  closely  related  to  the 
actual  district  organizations,  yet  of  a  superior  social 
order — men  who  perhaps  have  graduated  from  leader- 
ship into  the  more  aristocratic  if  equally  shady  pur- 
lieus of  crime.  These  handle  the  elections  and  de- 
liver the  vote,  own  a  gambling-house  or  two,  or  even 
more  disreputable  establishments,  select  likely  vic- 
tims of  society's  offscourings  for  blackmail,  and  act 
as  go-betweens  between  the  Ring  and  the  organiza- 
tion. They  also  furnish  the  influence  when  it  is 
needed  to  get  Camorrists  out  of  trouble,  and  mix 
freely  in  the  fast  life  of  Naples  and  elsewhere.  The 
power  of  the  Ring  reached  its  climax  in  1900. 

In  return  for  the  services  of  the  Camorra  bassa  in 
electing  its  deputies  to  office,  the  government  saw  to 
it  that  the  criminal  activities  of  the  society  were  not 
interfered  with.  Prefects  who  sought  to  do  their 
duty  found  themselves  removed  from  office  or  trans- 
ferred to  other  communes,  and  the  blight  of  the  Ca- 


164  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

morra  fell  upon  Parliament,  where  it  controlled  a 
number  of  deputies  from  the  provinces  of  "Capi- 
tanata";  all  governmental  interference  with  the  Ca- 
morra  was  blocked,  and  Italian  politics  weltered  in 
corruption. 

Upon  the  assassination  of  King  Humbert,  in  1900, 
the  situation  in  Naples  was  as  bad  as  that  of  New 
York  City  in  the  days  of  the  Tweed  Ring.  The  ig- 
norant Neapolitans  sympathized  with  the  Camorrists 
as  against  the  police,  and  voted  as  they  were  directed. 
Almost  all  the  lower  classes  were  affiliated  in  some  in- 
direct way  with  the  society,  much  as  they  are  in  New 
York  City  with  Tammany  to-day.  The  Ring  abso- 
lutely controlled  all  but  three  of  the  newspapers  pub- 
lished in  the  city.  The  lowest  depths  had  been 
reached  in  every  department  of  municipal  and  pro- 
vincial administration,  and  even  the  hospitals  and 
orphan  asylums  had  been  plundered  to  such  an  ex- 
tent that  there  was  nothing  left  for  the  thieves  to 
get  away  with. 

At  this  crisis  the  Socialist  newspaper,  La  Propa- 
ganda, courageously  sprang  to  the  attack  of  the  com- 
munal administration,  in  the  persons  of  the  Syndic 
Summonte  and  the  Deputy  Casale,  who,  smarting 
under  the  lash  of  its  excoriation,  brought  an  action 
of  libel  against  its  editor.  Heretofore  similar  attacks 
had  come  to  nothing,  but  the  facts  were  so  notorious 
that  Summonte  evaded  service  and  abandoned  his 
associate,  and  Casale,  facing  the  necessity  of  explain- 
ing how  he  could  support  a  luxurious  establishment 
on  no  salary,  endeavored  to  withdraw  the  action. 


THE  CAMOKRA  IN  ITALY  165 

The  Public  Minister  himself  announced  that  no  wit- 
nesses need  be  summoned  for  the  defense,  and  pub- 
licly expressed  his  indignation  that  a  governmental 
officer,  Commendatore  F.  S.  Garguilo,  Sustituto  Pro- 
curatore  Generale  of  the  Court  of  Cassation  in  Na- 
ples, should  have  accepted  a  retainer  for  Casale.  The 
tribunal  handed  down  a  decision  finding  that  the 
facts  asseverated  by  La  Propaganda  were  fully  proved 
and,  referring  to  the  influence  of  Casale,  said:  "The 
immorality  thence  emanating  is  such  as  to  nauseate 
every  honest  conscience,  and  to  affirm  this  in  a  ver- 
dict is  the  commencement  of  regeneration." 

This  was,  indeed,  the  commencement  of  a  tem- 
porary regeneration.  Casale  was  forced  to  resign 
his  seat  in  Parliament  and  in  the  provincial  council. 
The  entire  municipal  council  resigned,  and,  amid  the 
roarings  of  the  Neapolitan  Camorrist  press,  the  presi- 
dent of  the  Council  of  Ministers,  Senator  Saracco, 
proposed  and  secured  a  royal  commission  of  inquiry 
of  plenipotentiary  powers,  with  a  royal  commissioner 
to  administer  the  commune  of  Naples.  The  report 
of  this  commission,  in  two  volumes  of  nine  hundred 
pages  each,  draws  a  shocking  picture  of  municipal 
depravity,  in  which  Casale  appeared  as  recommending 
criminals  to  public  office,  selling  places  for  cash,  and 
holding  up  payments  to  the  city's  creditors  until  he 
had  been  "seen."  He  was  proved  to  have  received 
thirty  thousand  lire  for  securing  a  subsidy  for  a  steam- 
ship company,  and  sixty  thousand  lire  for  getting  a 
franchise  for  a  street  railway.  It  appeared  that  the 
corruption  in  the  educational  departments  passed 


166  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

description,  that  concessions  were  hawked  about  to 
the  highest  bidder,  and  that  in  one  deal — the  "  Scan- 
dalous Loan  Contract/'  so  called — five  hundred  thou- 
sand lire  had  been  divided  between  Scarfoglio,  Sum- 
monte,  Casale,  and  Delieto.  This  Scarfoglio,  the 
editor  of  II  Matino,  and  the  cleverest  journalist  in 
Naples,  was  exposed  as  the  Ring's  intermediary,  and 
his  wife,  the  celebrated  novelist,  Matilde  Serao,  was 
demonstrated  to  have  been  a  trafficker  in  posts  and 
places.  The  trial  and  exposures  created  a  furore  all 
over  Italy.  The  Prime  Minister  refused  to  continue 
the  Royal  Commission  and  announced  a  general  elec- 
tion, and,  amid  the  greatest  excitement,  the  Camorra 
railed  all  its  forces  for  its  final  struggle  in  politics. 
But  the  citizens  of  Naples  had  had  enough  of  the 
Ring  for  the  time  being,  and  buried  all  the  society's 
candidates  under  an  avalanche  of  votes.  This  was 
the  severest  blow  ever  dealt  to  the  political  influence 
of  the  Camorra. 

The  Casale  trial  marks  the  last  stage  of  the  Ca- 
morra's  history  to  date.  America  has  had  too  many 
"rings"  of  her  own  to  care  to  delve  deeply  into  the 
slime  of  Italian  politics.  The  Camorra  regularly  de- 
livers the  votes  of  the  organization  to  governmental 
candidates,  and  exerts  a  powerful  influence  in  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies.  It  still  flourishes  in  Naples, 
and  continues  in  a  somewhat  modified  form  its  old 
formalities  and  festivities;  but  its  life  is  hidden  and 
it  works  in  secret.  The  solidarity  of  the  organization 
has  yielded  to  a  growing  independence  on  the  part  of 
local  leaders,  whose  authority  is  often  usurped  by 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  167 

some  successful  basista  (burglary  planner).  The  big 
coups  become  fewer  as  the  years  go  on,  the  "stakes" 
for  which  the  criminal  game  is  played  smaller  and 
smaller. 

Police  Inspector  Simonetti,  who  had  many  years' 
experience  in  Naples,  gave  evidence  before,  the  Vi- 
terbo  Assize  on  June  8, 1911,  as  follows: 

"The  Camorra  truly  exists  at  Naples,  and  signi- 
fies violence  and  absolutism.  Formerly  it  had  severe 
laws  and  iron  regulations,  and  all  the  gains  derived 
from  criminal  undertakings  were  divided  among  all 
the  leaders.  There  was  blind,  absolute  obedience  to 
the  chiefs.  In  a  word,  the  Camorra  was  a  state 
within  a  state. 

"To-day  this  collectivism,  this  blind  obedience,  ex- 
ists no  longer.  All  the  Camorrists  respect  one  another 
but  they  act  every  man  for  himself. 

"The  Camorra  exerts  its  energies  in  divers  ways. 
The  first  rung  in  the  Camorrist  ladder  is  the  exploi- 
tation of  one  or  more  women;  the  second,  the  horse- 
fair  sales  and  public  auctions  of  pawned  goods.  The 
Camorrists  go  to  these  latter  with  the  special  object 
of  frightening  away  all  would-be  non-Camorrist  buy- 
ers. Usury  constitutes  another  special  source'of  lucre, 
and  at  Naples  is  exercised  on  a  very  large  scale.  The 
Camorrist  begins  by  lending  a  sum  of  five  francs,  at 
one  franc  per  week  interest,  in  such  fashion  that  the 
gain  grows  a  hundredfold,  so  that  the  Camorrist  who 
began  with  five-franc  loans  is  able  to  lend  enormous 
sums  to  noblemen  in  need  of  funds.  For  instance, 
the  Camorrist  loans  ten  thousand  lire,  but  exacts  a 


168  THE  CAMORKA  IN  ITALY 

receipt  for  twenty  thousand  lire,  and  gives  goods  in 
place  of  money,  these  goods  being  subsequently 
bought  back  at  low  prices  by  the  selfsame  usurers. 
Another  great  industry  of  the  Neapolitan  Camorra  is 
the  receipt  of  stolen  goods;  practically  all  the  re- 
ceivers of  such  in  Naples  are  members  of  the  Ca- 


morra." 


Governor  Abbate,  who  for  thirty  years  past  has 
been  chief  warder  of  the  prisons  at  Pozzuoli  near  Na- 
ples (the  ancient  Puteoli  at  which  St.  Paul  sojourned 
for  seven  days  on  his  way  to  Rome),  gave  evidence 
before  the  Viterbo  Assize  on  June  13,  1911: 

"In  the  course  of  my  thirty  years'  experience  I 
have  had  the  worst  scum  of  the  Neapolitan  Camorra 
pass  through  my  hands.  I  have  never  met  a  gentle- 
man nor  an  individual  capable  of  speaking  the  truth 
among  them.  I  have  never  been  without  a  contin- 
gent of  Camorrists  in  my  prison.  I  always  follow  the 
system  adopted  in  most  other  Italian  prisons  of  put- 
ting all  the  Camorrist  prisoners  together  in  a  pack 
by  themselves.  When  new  inmates  come,  they  spon- 
taneously declare  if  they  be  Camorrists,  just  as  one 
might  state  his  nationality  or  his  religion.  I  group 
them  accordingly  with  the  rest  of  their  fellows.  They 
know  they  will  be  so  treated;  and  unless  we  follow 
this  system  a  perfect  inferno  of  terrorism  ensues. 
The  Camorrists  seize  the  victuals,  the  clothes  and 
underwear  of  the  non-Camorrist  inmates,  whom,  in 
fact,  they  despoil  in  every  way  imaginable. 

"  I  come  to  learn  the  grades  of  my  Camorrist  prison- 
ers inasmuch  as  Camorrists,  probationers,  freshmen, 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  169 

and  the  rank  and  file,  show  studious  obedience  to  their 
seniors  and  chiefs,  whom  they  salute  with  the  title  of 
'master.'" 

The  Camorrist,  in  addition  to  exploiting  women, 
still  levies  toll  on  boatmen,  waiters,  cab-drivers, 
fruit-sellers,  and  porters,  and,  under  guise  of  protect- 
ing the  householder  from  the  Camorrists,  extorts  each 
week  small  sums  from  the  ordinary  citizen.  The 
meanest  work  of  these  "mean  thieves"  is  the  robbing 
of  emigrants  about  to  embark,  from  whom  they  steal 
clothing  and  money  and  even  the  pitiful  little  pack- 
ages of  food  they  have  provided  for  the  voyage. 

A  grade  higher  (or  lower)  are  the  gangs  of  burglars 
or  thieves  whose  work  is  directed  and  planned,  and 
the  tools  and  means  for  which  are  furnished  by  a 
padrone  or  basista.  These  will  also  do  a  job  of  stab- 
bing and  face-slashing  at  cut  rates  or  for  nothing  to 
oblige  a  real  friend  of  the  "Beautifully  Reformed 
Society." 

More  elevated  in  the  social  scale  is  the  type  of 
Professor  Rapi  or  Signer  de  Marinis,  the  Camorrista 
elegante,  who  on  the  fringe  of  society  watches  his 
chance  to  blackmail  a  society  woman,  "arrange" 
various  private  sexual  matters  for  some  nobleman, 
or  cheat  a  drunken  aristocrat  at  the  gaming-tables. 

Last,  there  is  the  traffic  in  the  elections,  which 
has  been  so  advantageous  to  the  government  in  the 
not  distant  past  that  its  ostentatious  attempts  to 
drive  out  the  Camorra,  made  in  response  to  public 
demand,  have  usually  been  half-hearted,  if  not  bla- 
tantly insincere. 


170  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

Yet  the  traditions  of  the  Camorra  still  obtain,  and 
in  many  of  the  prisons  its  influence  is  supreme.  Wit- 
ness the  deadly  duel  between  twelve  Camorrists  and 
twelve  Mafiusi  in  1905  in  the  Pozzuoli  penitentiary, 
in  which  five  men  were  killed  and  the  remainder  had 
to  be  torn  apart  at  the  muzzles  of  the  infantry.  Wit- 
ness also,  and  more  strikingly,  the  trial  and  execu- 
tion of  Lubrano,  who,  confined  in  jail  with  other  Ca- 
morristi,  betrayed  their  secrets.  In  formal  session 
behind  prison  walls,  the  "brothers"  sentenced  him 
to  death,  and  he  was  stabbed  by  a  picciotto,  who  was 
thereupon  "raised"  to  the  highest  grade  of  the 
society. 

The  Camorrists  still  turn  out  in  force  for  their  re- 
ligious holidays,  and  visit  Monte  Vergine  and  other 
shrines  in  gala  costume,  accompanied  by  their  women. 
Drunken  rioting,  debauchery,  and  knifings  mark  the 
devotions  of  this  most  religious  sect.  But  they  are  a 
shoddy  lot  compared  to  the  "bravos"  of  the  last 
century.  At  best,  they  are  a  lot  of  cheap  crooks — 
"pikers"  compared  to  a  first-class  cracksman — 
pimps,  sharpers,  petty  thieves,  and  dealers  in  de- 
pravity, living  off  the  proceeds  of  women  and  by  the 
blackmail  of  the  ignorant  and  credulous. 

It  would  be  ridiculous  to  deny  that  the  Camorra 
exists  in  Naples,  but  it  would  be  equally  absurd  to 
claim  that  it  has  the  picturesqueness  or  virility  of 
ancient  times.  Yet  it  is  dreaded  by  all — by  the  Con- 
tessa  in  her  boudoir,  by  the  manager  of  the  great 
trans-oceanic  line,  by  the  ragazzo  on  the  street.  The 
inquiry  of  the  traveller  reveals  little  concerning  it. 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  171 

One  will  be  confidently  told  that  no  such  society  or 
sect  any  longer  exists,  and  with  equal  certainty  that 
.it  is  an  active  organization  of  criminals  in  close  alli- 
ance with  the  government.  Then,  suddenly,  some 
trifling  incident  occurs  and  your  eyes  are  opened  to 
the  truth,  at  first  hardly  realized,  that  the  crust  of 
modern  civilization  is,  in  the  case  of  southern  Italy, 
superimposed  upon  conditions  of  life  no  more  en- 
lightened than  they  were  a  thousand  years  ago,  and 
that  hatred  and  distrust  of  government,  ignorance, 
bigotry,  and  poverty  make  it  a  field  fertile  for  any 
sort  of  superstition  or  belief,  be  it  in  the  potency  of 
the  pulverized  bones  of  young  children  for  rheuma- 
tism, the  efficacy  of  a  stuffed  dove  sliding  down  a 
wire  as  a  giver  of  fat  harvest,  or  the  deadly  power  of 
the  Camorra.  And  where  several  million  people  be- 
lieve in  and  fear  the  Camorra,  if  for  no  other  reason, 
the  Camorra  or  something  akin  to  it  is  bound  to  exist. 

Before  long  you  will  begin  to  find  out  things  for 
yourself.  You  may  have  your  watch  filched  from 
your  waistcoat  pocket,  and  you  may  perhaps  get  it 
back  through  the  agency  of  a  shabby  gentleman 
— introduced  by  the  hotel  porter — who,  in  spite  of 
his  rough  exterior  and  threadbare  clothing,  proves 
marvellously  skilful  in  tracing  the  stolen  property — 
for  a  consideration. 

You  may  observe  that  sometimes,  when  you  take 
a  cab,  a  mysterious  stranger  will  spring  up  beside  the 
driver  and  accompany  you  to  your  destination.  This 
is  the  "collector"  for  the  Camorra — the  parasite  that 
feeds  on  every  petty  trade  and  occupation  in  the  city. 


172  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

For  the  boatman  shares  his  hire  with  a  man  who  loit- 
ers on  the  dock;  the  porter  gives  up  a  soldo  or  two 
on  every  job;  and  the  beggar  divides  with  the  Ca- 
morra  the  profit  from  la  misericordia*  Last  of  all, 
you  may  stumble  into  one  of  the  quarters  of  Naples 
where  the  keeping  of  order  is  practically  intrusted 
to  the  Camorra;  where  the  police  do  not  go,  save  in 
squads;  and  where  each  householder  or  dive-keeper 
pays  a  weekly  tax  to  the  society  for  its  supposed 
"protection,"  part  of  which  goes  higher  up — to  some 
"delegate"  or  "commissary"  of  the  "P.  S."  f 

Or  you  may  enter  into  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria 
del  Carmine  and  find  a  throng  of  evil-faced  men  and 
women  worshipping  at  the  shrines  and  calling  for  the 
benediction  of  the  Holy  Trinity  upon  their  criminal 
enterprises.  It  is  said  that  sometimes  they  hang 
votive  offerings  of  knives  and  daggers  upon  the  altars, 
and  religiously  give  Heaven  its  share  out  of  the  pro- 
ceeds of  their  crimes,  much  as  some  of  our  own  kings 
of  finance  and  merchant  princes,  after  a  lifetime  of 
fraud  and  violation  of  law,  will  seek  to  salve  their 
consciences  and  buy  an  entrance  to  Paradise  by 
founding  a  surgical  hospital  or  endowing  a  chair  of 
moral  philosophy.  But  until,  by  chance,  you  meet 
a  Camorrist  funeral,  you  will  have  no  conception  of 
the  real  horror  of  the  Camorra,  with  its  procession 
of  human  parasites  with  their  blinking  eyes,  their 
shuffling  gait,  their  artificial  sores  and  deformities, 
all  crawling  from  their  holes  to  shamble  in  the  trail 

*  Compassion. 

t  Publica  Securezza,  or  Public  Safety — the  regular  police. 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  173 

of  the  hearse  that  carries  a  famous  lasista,  a  capo 
pojranze}  or  a  capo  in  testa  to  his  grave. 

It  is  undoubtedly  a  fact  that  ease  of  living,  which 
generates  indolence,  induces  moral  laxity,  and  a  so- 
ciety composed  in  part  of  a  hundred  thousand  home- 
less people,  so  poor  that  a  few  soldi  represent  a  feast 
or  a  festival,  who  sleep  in  alleys,  on  the  wharves,  in 
the  shrubbery  of  parks,  or  wherever  night  finds  them, 
is  a  fertile  recruiting  ground  for  criminals.  The  pov- 
erty of  the  scum  of  Naples  passes  conception.  Air 
and  sky,  climate  and  temperature,  combine  to  induce 
a  vagabondage  which  inevitably  is  hostile  to  author- 
ity. The  strong  bully  the  weak;  the  man  tyran- 
nizes the  woman;  the  padrone  easily  finds  a  ragged 
crew  eager  to  do  his  bidding  for  a  plate  of  macaroni 
and  a  flask  of  unspeakable  wine ;  a  well-dressed  scoun- 
drel becomes  a  demi-god  by  simple  virtue  of  his  clothes 
and  paste-diamond  scarf-pin;  the  thief  that  success- 
fully evades  the  law  is  a  hero;  and  the  crook  who 
stands  in  with  the  police  is  a  politician  and  a  diplo- 
mat. The  existence  of  the  Camorra  in  its  broad  sense 
turns,  not  on  the  vigor  of  the  government  or  the  hon- 
esty of  the  local  functionaries,  so  much  as  on  the  con- 
ditions of  the  society  in  which  it  is  to  be  found. 

Such  is  a  glimpse  of  the  Camorra,  past  and  pres- 
ent, which,  with  its  secret  relations  to  the  police,  its 
terrors  for  the  superstitious  and  timid,  its  attrac- 
tion for  the  weak  and  evil-minded,  its  value  to  the 
politicians,  its  appeal  to  the  natural  hatred  of  the 
southern  Italian  for  law  and  government,  will  con- 
tinue so  long  as  social  conditions  in  Naples  remain 


174  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

the  same — until  reform  displaces  indifference  and  in- 
capacity, and  education*  and  religion  effectively 
unite  to  lift  the  Neapolitans  out  of  the  stew  of  their 
own  grease.  This  is  the  sociological  key  to  the  Ca- 
morra, for  camorra  means  nothing  but  moral  de- 
linquency, and  moral  delinquency  is  always  the 
companion  of  ignorance,  superstition,  and  poverty. 
These  last  are  the  three  bad  angels  of  southern  Italy. 

For  the  reasons  previously  stated  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  the  disclosures  of  1900  had  little  or  no  per- 
manent effect  upon  the  criminal  activities  of  the  Ca- 
morra. The  Ring  and  the  politicians  had,  it  is 
true,  received  a  severe  shock,  but  the  minor  crimi- 
nals had  not  been  affected  and  their  hold  on  the  pop- 
ulation remained  as  strong  as  ever.  Soon  the  Ca- 
morrists  became  as  active  at  the  elections,  and  the 
authorities  as  complacent,  as  before,  and  after  a 
spasmodic  pretence  at  virtue  the  "Public  Safety" 
relapsed  into  its  old  relations  to  the  organization,  f 

The  leaders  of  the  new  "Beautifully  Reformed 
Society"  were  reported  to  be  Giovanni  Rapi,  a  suave 
and  well-educated  gambler,  the  Cashier  of  the  or- 
ganization and  its  chief  adviser,  surnamed  "The  Pro- 
fessor" for  having  once  taught  modern  languages  in 
the  public  schools,  at  one  and  the  same  time  a  mem- 
ber of  both  the  high  and  the  low  Camorra,  and  an 
international  blackleg;  Enrico  Alfano,  popularly 
known  as  "Ericone,"  the  reorganizer  of  the  society 

*  The  Italian  Parliament  approved  in  June  last  a  bill  proposed 
by  the  government  authorizing  the  establishment  of  6,000  schools, 
mainly  in  the  southern  provinces,  at  a  cost  of  250,000,000  lire 
($50,000,000.)  t  See  appendix. 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  175 

and  its  "Supreme  Head,"  the  boss  of  all  the  gangs, 
a  fearless  manipulator  of  elections,  a  Camorrist  of 
the  new  order — of  the  revolver  instead  of  the  knife, 
the  confidant  of  his  godfather,  Don  Giro  Vittozzi, — 
the  third  of  the  criminal  triumvirate,  the  most  me- 
diaeval of  all  these  mediaeval  figures,  and  the  Machia- 
velli  of  Naples. 

Known  as  the  "Guardian  Angel"  or  "Confessor" 
of  the  Camorra,  this  priest  was  chaplain  of  the  Na- 
ples Cemetery,  and  as  such  was  accused  of  unsavory 
dealings  of  a  ghoulish  nature,*  but  he  exerted  wide 
power  and  influence,  had  the  ear  of  the  nobility  and 
the  entree  to  their  palaces,  and  even  claims  to  have 
been  the  confessor  of  the  late  King.  Once,  a  cabby, 
not  recognizing  Vittozzi,  overcharged  him.  The  ec- 
clesiastic protested,  but  the  man  was  insistent.  At 
length  the  priest  paid  the  fare,  saying,  "Remember 
that  you  have  cheated  Don  Giro  Vittozzi."  That 
night  the  cabman  was  set  upon  and  beaten  almost 
beyond  recognition.  Next  day  he  came  crawling  to 
the  priest  and  craved  permission  to  drive  him  for 
nothing.  Many  such  stories  are  told  of  Vittozzi. 

Besides  these  leaders,  there  were  a  score  of  lesser 
lights — de  Marinis,  the  "swell"  of  the  Camorra,  a 
mixer  in  the  "smart  set,"  fond  of  horses  and  of  dia- 
monds, a  go-between  for  the  politicians;  Luigi  Arena, 
the  scientific  head  of  the  corps  of  burglars;  Luigi 
Fucci,  the  "dummy"  head  of  the  Camorra;  and  Gen- 
naro  Cuocolo,  a  shrewd  "basista"  and  planner  of 
burglarious  campaigns,  a  little  boss,  grown  arrogant 

*  In  stolen  burial  shrouds  and  the  bones  of  children. 


176  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

from  felonious  success.  The  cast,  indeed,  is  too  long 
for  recapitulation. 

These  met  and  planned  the  tricks  that  were  to  be 
turned,  assigned  each  "picciotto"  to  his  duty,  re- 
ceived and  apportioned  the  proceeds,  giving  a  due 
share  to  the  police,  and  perhaps  betraying  a  comrade 
or  two  for  good  measure — a  crowd  of  dirty  rascals, 
at  whose  activities  the  authorities  connived  more  or 
less  openly  until  the  dual  murderithat  forced  the 
Italian  government  to  recognize  the  gravity  of  the 
conditions  existing  in  the  criminal  world  of  Naples. 

Then,  in  the  twilight  of  the  early  morning  of  June 
6, 1906,  two  cartmen  found  the  body  of  Cuocolo,  the 
"basista,"  covered  with  stab-wounds  by  a  roadside 
on  the  slope  of  Vesuvius.  At  almost  the  same  mo- 
ment in  the  Via  Nardones,  in  Naples,  in  a  house  di- 
rectly opposite  the  Commissariat  of  Public  Safety, 
the  police  discovered  his  wife,  Maria  Cutinelli  Cuo- 
colo, stabbed  to  death  in  her  bed.  Both  were  well- 
known  Camorrists,  and  the  crime  bore  every  indica- 
tion of  being  a  "vendetta."  The  first  inquiries  and 
formalities  were  conducted  quite  correctly.  The 
police  arrived  on  the  spot  and  reported.  The  mag- 
istrate came  more  deliberately,  but  in  due  course. 
The  two  places  where  the  crimes  had  occurred  were 
duly  examined,  the  two  autopsies  made,  and  a  few 
witnesses  heard.  So  far,  everything  had  gone  on  just 
as  it  might  have  in  New  York  or  Boston. 

But  then  the  Camorra  got  busy  and  things  began 
to  go  differently.  Meantime,  however,  the  police  had 
received  an  anonymous  letter,  in  which  the  writer 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  177 

alleged  that  upon  the  night  of  the  murder  (July  5) 
a  certain  dinner  party  had  taken  place  at  an  inn 
known  as  "Mimi  a  Mare"  at  Cupra  Calastro  in  the 
commune  of  Torre  del  Greco,  within  a  hundred  yards 
of  the  scene  of  the  homicide,  at  which  the  guests  pres- 
ent were  Enrico  Alfano,  Giro  Alfano,  his  brother,  Gen- 
naro  Ibello,  Giovanni  Rapi,  and  another.  While  they 
were  drinking  wine  and  singing,  a  man  suddenly  en- 
tered— Mariano  de  Gennaro — and  made  a  sign  to 
Alfano,  who  pledged  the  visitor  in  a  glass  of  "  Mar- 
sala" and  cried,  "All  is  well.  We  will  meet  to- 
morrow." This  the  police  easily  verified,  and  the 
diners  were  thereupon  all  arrested  and  charged  with 
being  accomplices  in  the  murder,  simply  because  it 
appeared  that  they  had  been  near  by.  There  was  no 
other  evidence.  Perhaps  the  wise  police  thought  that 
if  arrested  these  criminals  would  confess.  At  any 
rate,  the  merry-makers  were  all  locked  up  and  Magis- 
trate Romano  of  Naples  began  an  investigation.  At 
this  juncture  of  the  drama  entered  Don  Giro  Vit- 
tozzi,  girded  in  his  priestly  robes,  a  "Holy  Man,"  in 
the  odor  of  sanctity. 

He  hastened,  not  to  the  magistrate  having  the  case 
in  charge,  but  to  another,  and  induced  him  to  begin 
an  independent  investigation.  He  swore  by  his 
priestly  office  that  his  godson,  Giro  Alfano,  was  in- 
nocent as  well  as  the  others.  He  whispered  the 
names  of  the  real  murders — two  ex-convicts,  Tom- 
maso  De  Angelis  and  Gaetano  Amodeo — and  told 
where  the  evidence  of  their  guilt  could  be  obtained. 
He  produced  a  witness,  Giacomo  Ascrittore,  who  had 


178  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

overheard  them  confessing  their  guilt  and  the  motive 
for  the  murder — revenge  because  Cuocolo  had 
cheated  them  out  of  the  proceeds  of  still  another 
homicide.  A  police  spy,  Antonio  Parlati,  and  De- 
lagato  Ippolito,  a  Commissary  of  police,  gave  their 
active  assistance  to  the  crafty  priest.  The  prisoners 
were  released,  while  in  their  stead  De  Angelis  and 
Amodeo  were  thrown  into  jail. 

Then  the  storm  broke.  The  decent  men  of  Naples, 
the  Socialists,  the  honest  public  of  Italy,  with  one 
voice,  demanded  that  an  end  should  be  put  to  these 
things — and  the  Camorra.  The  cry,  taken  up  by  the 
unbought  press,  swept  from  the  Gulf  of  Genoa  to  the 
Adriatic  and  to  the  Straits  of  Messina.  The  ears  of 
the  bureaucracy  burned.  Even  Giolitti,  the  prime 
minister,  listened.  The  government  put  its  ear  to  the 
ground  and  heard  the  rumble  of  a  political  earth- 
quake. They  are  shrewd,  these  Italian  politicians. 
Instantly  a  bulletin  was  issued  that  the  government 
had  determined  to  exterminate  the  Camorra  once  and 
for  all  time.  The  honest  and  eager  King  found  sup- 
port ready  to  his  hand  and  sent  for  the  General  com- 
manding the  Carabinieri  and  intrusted  the  matter  to 
him  personally.  The  General  at  once  ordered  Cap- 
tain Carlo  Fabbroni  to  go  to  Naples  and  see  what 
could  be  done.  Fabbroni  went,  summoning  first  Er- 
minio  Capezzuti  and  Giuseppi  Farris,  non-commis- 
sioned officers  of  the  rank  of  Maresciallo,*  sleuths  of 
no  mean  order.  In  two  months  Capezzuti  had  en- 
snared Gennaro  Abattemaggio,  a  petty  thief  and 

*  About  equivalent  to  our  "quartermaster-sergeant.'! 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  179 

blackmailer  and  an  insignificant  member  of  the  Ca- 
morra,  and  induced  him  to  turn  informer  against  the 
society,  and  the  house  of  Ascrittore  was  searched  and 
a  draft  of  what  it  was  planned  that  he  should  testify 
to  upon  the  charges  against  De  Angelis  and  Amodeo 
was  discovered  written  in  the  hand  of  Ippolito,  the  Dele- 
gate* of  Police !  Thereupon  the  spy,  Parlati,  and 
Ascrittore  were  both  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison 
on  the  charge  of  calumny.  Vittozzi,  the  priest,  was 
arrested  for  blackmail,  and  his  residence  was  rum- 
maged with  the  result  that  quantities  of  obscene 
photographs  and  pictures  were  discovered  among  the 
holy  man's  effects!  Abattemaggio  made  a  full  con- 
fession and  testified  that  the  five  diners  at  "Mimi  a 
Mare" — the  first  arrested — had  planned  the  murders 
and  were  awaiting  at  the  inn  to  hear  the  good  news 
of  their  accomplishment. 

According  to  his  testimony,  Cuocolo  and  his  wife 
had  been  doomed  to  death  by  the  central  Council  of 
the  Camorra  for  treachery  to  the  society  and  its  de- 
crees. Cuocolo,  ostensibly  a  dealer  in  antiquities, 
was  known  to  have  for  many  years  planned  and  or- 
ganized the  more  important  burglaries  executed  by 
his  inferiors.  Owing  to  his  acquaintance  with  many 
wealthy  persons  and  aristocrats  he  was  able  to  fur- 
nish plans  of  their  homes  and  the  information  neces- 
sary successfully  to  carry  out  his  criminal  schemes. 
In  course  of  time  he  married  Marie  Cutinelli,  a  woman 
of  doubtful  reputation,  known  as  "La  Bella  Sorren- 
tina."  She,  for  her  part,  purchased  immunity  for 
Cuocolo  by  her  relations  with  certain  police  officials, 


180  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

and  her  house  became  the  scene  of  Camorrist  de- 
bauchery. Thus,  gradually,  Cuocolo  in  turn  affiliated 
himself  with  the  police  as  a  spy,  and,  to  secure  himself, 
occasionally  betrayed  an  inferior  member  of  the  soci- 
ety. He  also  grew  arrogant,  defied  the  mandates  of 
the  heads  of  the  society  and  cheated  his  fellows  out  of 
their  share  of  the  booty.  For  these  and  various  other 
offences  he  was  doomed  to  death  by  the  Camorrist 
tribunal  of  high  justice,  at  a  meeting  held  upon  May 
26,  1906,  and  presided  over  by  Enrico  Alfano.  He 
and  his  wife — who  otherwise  would  have  betrayed  the 
assassins  to  the  police — were  thereupon  stabbed  to 
death,  as  related  above,  on  the  night  of  June  5, 1906, 
by  divers  members  of  the  Camorra.  The  adventures 
of  Capezzuti,  who,  to  accomplish  his  ends,  became 
a  companion  of  the  canaille  of  Naples,  form  a  thrill- 
ing narrative.  For  our  present  purposes  it  is  enough 
to  say  that  in  due  course  he  formed  the  acquaintance 
of  Abattemaggio,  visited  him  in  prison,  and  secured 
from  him  a  list  of  the  Camorrists  and  full  informa- 
tion relative  to  the  inner  officers  and  workings  of  the 
organization. 

Meanwhile  Enrico  Alfano  having  been  released 
from  custody  had  for  a  while  lived  hi  Naples  in  his 
usual  haunts,  but,  on  learning  that  the  Carabinieri 
had  been  ordered  to  take  a  hand  in  investigating  the 
situation,  he  had  gone  first  into  hiding  at  Afragola, 
a  village  near  Naples,  and  had  afterward  fled  to 
New  York,  where  he  had  been  arrested  later  in  the 
year  by  Detective  Petrosino  and  sent  back  to  Havre, 
while  Italian  police  officers  were  on  their  way  to 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  181 

America  to  take  him  back  to  Naples.  Luckily,  the 
French  government  was  notified  in  time,  so  that  he 
was  turned  over  to  the  Italian  government  instead 
of  being  set  at  liberty,  and  was  delivered  to  the  Car- 
abinieri  in  June,  1907,  at  Bardonacchia,  on  the 
frontier,  together  with  fourteen  other  criminals  who 
were  being  expelled  from  French  territory.  Then 
Capezzuti,  armed  with  the  confession  of  Abatte- 
maggio,  made  a  clean  sweep  of  all  the  Camorrists 
against  whom  any  evidence  could  be  obtained  and 
conducted  wholesale  raids  upon  their  homes  and 
hiding  places,  with  the  result  that  Rapi  and  the 
others  were  all  arrested  over  again. 

During  the  next  four  years  the  Carabinieri  found 
themselves  blocked  at  every  turn  owing  to  the  machi- 
nations of  the  Camorra.  Abattemaggio  made  several 
independent  confessions,  and  many  false  and  fruit- 
less leads  had  to  be  run  down.  The  police  ("Public 
Safety")  were  secretly  hostile  to  the  Carabinieri 
and  hindered  instead  of  helped  them.  Indeed,  they 
assisted  actively  in  the  defence  of  the  Camorra.  Im- 
portant documents  were  purloined.  Evidence  dis- 
appeared. Divers  magistrates  carried  on  separate  in- 
vestigations, kept  the  evidence  to  themselves,  and 
connived  at  the  misconduct  of  the  police.  The  Dela- 
gato  Ippolito  and  his  officers  were  tried  upon  the  de- 
nunciation of  Captain  Fabbroni,  and  were  all  ac- 
quitted, for  the  Carabinieri  were  not  called  as  wit- 
nesses, and  the  public  prosecutor  who  had  asked  for 
a  three-year  jail  sentence  did  not  even  appeal  the 
case!  Each  side  charged  the  other  with  incompe- 
tence and  corruption  and — nothing  happened. 


182  THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY 

The  defendants,  numbering  thirty-six  in  all,  were 
finally  brought  to  trial  at  the  Assize  Court  atViterbo, 
forty  miles  from  Rome,  in  the  spring  of  1911,  and  at 
the  present  time*  the  proceedings  are  still  going  on. 
The  case  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  most  sensational  on 
record  and  the  newspapers  of  the  civilized  world  have 
vied  with  one  another  in  keeping  it  in  the  public  eye 
during  the  year  or  more  that  has  elapsed  since  the 
jury  were  empannelled,  but  there  is  no  direct  evi- 
dence as  to  the  perpetrators  of  the  homicides,  and, 
unfortunately,  unless  the  jury  find  that  some  of  the 
Camorristi  in  the  cage  actually  planned  and  exe- 
cuted the  murder  of  the  Cuocolos,  the  consequences 
to  the  defendants  will  not  be  serious,  as  mere  "asso- 
ciation for  delinquency"  with  which  most  of  them 
are  charged  is  punishable  with  a  shorter  term  of  im- 
prisonment than  that  which  will  have  been  suffered 
by  the  accused  before  the  conclusion  of  their  trial. 
Under  Article  40  of  the  Italian  Penal  Code,  the  de- 
fendants get  credit  for  this  period,  so  that  in  most 
instances  a  verdict  of  guilty  at  Viterbo  would  be  fol- 
lowed by  the  immediate  discharge  of  the  prisoners.! 
This  is  the  case  with  Rapi — although  the  evidence 
has  brought  out  a  new  offence  for  which  he  may  still 
be  prosecuted.  And,  as  blackmail,  for  which  that 
astounding  rascal,  Don  Giro  Vittozzi,  is  being  tried, 
is  punishable  with  but  three  to  five  years  imprison- 
ment, "that  Holy  Man,"  as  he  is  termed  by  Alfano, 
will  probably  never  be  compelled  to  retire  to  a  gov- 
ernmental cloister. 

*May,  1912. 

t  Ten  or  more  have  been  liberated  already  on  this  ground. 


THE  CAMORRA  IN  ITALY  183 

But  whatever  the  result  of  the  trial,  it  is  quite  un- 
likely that  the  prosecution  will  have  any  lasting  effect 
upon  the  Camorra,  for  while  this  cage  full  of  petty 
criminals  has  engaged  and  is  engaging  the  entire  re- 
sources of  the  Italian  government  a  thousand  or  so 
others  have  come  into  being,  and  an  equal  number 
have  grown  to  manhood  and  as  picciotti  have  filled  the 
places  temporarily  left  vacant  by  their  incarcerated 
superiors.  Nay,  it  is  even  probable  that  the  public 
exploitation  of  the  activities  of  the  society  will  give 
it  a  new  standing  and  an  increased  fascination  for 
the  unemployed  youth  of  Naples. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
AN  AMERICAN  LAWYER  AT  VITERBO 

IT  is  not  unnatural  that  a  young,  enthusiastic,  and 
self-confident  people  should  regard  with  condescen- 
sion, if  not  contempt,  the  institutions  of  foreign,  if 
older,  societies.  Americans  very  generally  suffer 
from  the  illusion  that  liberty  was  not  discovered  prior 
to  1776,  and  that  their  country  enjoys  a  monopoly 
of  it.  Even  experienced  and  conservative  editorial 
writers  sometimes  unconsciously  fall  victims  to  the 
provincial  trait  of  decrying  methods,  procedures,  and 
systems  simply  because  they  are  not  our  own.  With- 
out, the  writer  believes,  a  single  exception,  the  news- 
papers of  the  United  States  have  indulged  in  torrents 
of  bitter  criticism  at  the  manner  in  which  the  trial  of 
the  Camorra  prisoners  at  Viterbo  is  being  conducted, 
and  have  commonly  compared  the  court  itself  to  a 
"bear  garden,"  a  "circus,"  or  a  "cage  of  monkeys." 
Wherever  the  matter  has  been  the  subject  of  discus- 
sion or  comment,  the  tone  has  been  always  the  same, 
with  the  implied,  if  unexpressed,  suggestion  that  if 
the  prosecution  were  being  conducted  here  the  world 
would  see  how  quickly  and  effectively  we  would  dis- 
pose of  the  case — and  this  with  the  memory  of  the 
Thaw  and  Patterson  trials  fresh  in  our  minds.  The 
following  editorial  from  the  New  York  Times,  printed 
in  March  of  this  year,  is  by  no  means  extreme  as  com- 

184 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         185 

pared  with  the  views  expressed  in  other  newspapers, 
and  seems  to  indicate  the  popular  impression  of  the 
manner  in  which  this  trial  is  being  carried  on: 

Our  own  methods  of  criminal  procedure  have  long  been  the 
object  of  severe  and  just  criticism,  and  in  our  exaggerated  and 
insincere  fear  of  convicting  the  innocent  we  have  made  the 
conviction  of  the  guilty  always  difficult  and  often  impossible. 
Quite  unknown  in  our  criminal  courts,  however,  and  fortu- 
nately, are  such  strange  scenes  as  are  presented  daily  at  the 
trial  of  the  Camorrists  now  going  on  in  Italy. 

There  the  law  is  so  little  confident  of  its  own  powers  that 
the  accused  are  herded  together  in  one  steel  cage,  apparently 
with  the  idea  of  preventing  attempts  at  rescue  by  a  public 
largely  sympathetic  with  organized  robbery  and  assassination, 
while  the  witness  for  the  prosecution  is  secluded  in  another 
cage,  lest  he  be  torn  to  pieces  by  the  prisoners  or  their  friends. 
The  pleadings  on  each  side  seem  to  consist  largely  of  denun- 
ciations and  threats  aimed  at  the  other,  tears  of  rage  alter- 
nate with  shrieks  of  the  same  origin,  and  order  is  only  occa- 
sionally restored,  when  the  din  rises  too  high,  by  the  curiously 
gentle  expedient  of  suspending  the  session  of  the  court. 

How  justice  is  to  be  the  outcome  of  proceedings  such  as 
these,  and  thus  conducted,  may  be  comprehensible  to  what  is 
called — with  little  reason — the  Latin  mind,  but  others  are 
lost  in  amazement.  It  is  all  highly  interesting,  no  doubt,  but 
one  is  no  more  likely  to  regret  that  we  do  not  carry  on  our 
trials  in  this  way  than  he  is  to  be  sorry  that  our  criminals 
are  not  such  important  and  powerful  persons  as  the  members 
of  the  Camorra  seem  to  be. 

Only  one  fact  stands  out  clearly  at  Viterbo — the  fact  that 
the  attack  on  the  banded  brigands  has  been  so  long  delayed 
that  the  authority  of  the  law  can  not  now  be  vindicated  with- 
out producing  a  sort  of  civil  war.  Which  ought  to  be  humili- 
ating for  somebody. 

Only  one  conclusion  could  have  been  reached  by 
the  half  million  readers  of  this  particular  editorial, 


186         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

and  that — the  immense  superiority  of  our  own  legal 
procedure  and  method  of  handling  criminal  business 
over  those  of  Italy. 

Yet  (to  examine  the  statements  in  this  editorial 
seriatim)  it  is  not  true  that  scenes  similar  to  those 
enacted  at  Viterbo  are  unknown  in  our  criminal 
courts;  that  the  lack  of  confidence  of  the  authorities 
in  their  own  power  is  the  cause  of  the  prisoners  being 
confined  in  court  in  a  steel  cage;  that  the  public  is 
"largely  sympathetic  with  organized  robbery  and  as- 
sassination"; and  that  tears  and  shrieks  of  rage  al- 
ternate to  create  a  pandemonium  which  can  be  stilled 
only  by  adjourning  court;  and,  while  there  is  enough 
justification  in  fact  to  give  color  to  such  an  editorial, 
the  only  extenuation  for  its  exaggeration  and  the 
false  impression  it  creates  lies  in  the  charitable  view 
that  the  writer  had  an  equally  blind  confidence  in 
the  sincerity  of  his  resident  Italian  correspondent  and 
in  the  latter 's  cabled  accounts  of  what  was  going  on. 

Unfortunately,  the  reporters  at  Viterbo  have  sent 
in  only  the  most  sensational  accounts  of  the  proceed- 
ings, since,  unless  their  "stuff"  is  good  copy,  the  ex- 
pense of  collecting  and  cabling  European  news  de- 
prives it  of  a  market.  The  press  men  at  Viterbo 
have  given  the  American  editors  just  what  they 
wanted.  Such  opportunities  occur  only  once  or 
twice  in  a  lifetime,  and  they  have  fully  availed  them- 
selves of  it. 

Then,  to  the  false  and  exaggerated  cable  of  the 
correspondent  the  "write-up  man"  lends  his  imagi- 
nation; significant  and  important  facts  are  omitted 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         187 

altogether,  and  the  public  is  led  to  believe  that  an 
Italian  criminal  trial  consists  of  a  yelling  bandit  in  a 
straitjacket,  with  a  hysterical  judge  and  frenzied 
lawyer  abusing  each  other's  character  and  ancestry. 

Let  the  writer  state,  at  the  outset,  that  he  has  never 
in  his  legal  experience  seen  a  judge  presiding  with 
greater  courtesy,  patience,  fairness,  or  ability,  or 
keeping,  as  a  general  rule,  under  all  the  circumstances, 
so  perfect  a  control  over  his  court,  as  the  president 
of  the  assize  in  which  the  prosecution  of  the  Camorra 
is  being  conducted;  nor  is  he  familiar  with  any  legal 
procedure  better  fitted  to  ascertain  the  truth  of  the 
charges  being  tried. 

In  studying  the  Camorra  trial  at  Yiterbo,  or  any 
other  Italian  or  French  criminal  proceeding,  the 
reader  must  bear  in  mind  that  there  is  a  fundamental 
distinction  between  them  and  our  own,  and  that 
there  are  two  great  and  theoretically  entirely  dif- 
ferent systems  of  criminal  procedure,  one  of  which  is 
the  offspring  of  the  Imperial  Roman  law  and  the  other 
entirely  Anglo-Saxon.  One  is  the  Roman  or  inquisi- 
torial system,  and  the  other  the  English  or  contro- 
versial. Under  the  former  the  officers  of  the  state 
are  charged  with  the  duty  of  ferreting  out  and  pun- 
ishing crime  wherever  found,  and  the  means  placed 
at  their  disposal  are  those  likely  to  be  most  effective 
for  the  purpose.  The  theory  of  the  latter  is  that,  to 
some  extent  at  least,  a  criminal  trial  is  the  result  of 
a  dispute  between  two  persons,  one  the  accuser  and 
the  other  the  accused,  and  that  the  proceeding  savors 
of  a  private  law-suit.  Now,  it  is  obvious  that,  in 


188         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

principle  at  least,  the  two  systems  differ  materially. 
In  the  one,  the  only  thing  originally  considered  was 
the  best  way  to  find  out  whether  a  criminal  were 
guilty  and  to  lock  him  up,  irrespective  of  whether 
or  not  any  private  individual  had  brought  an  accu- 
sation against  him.  In  the  other,  somebody  had  to 
make  a  complaint  and  "get  his  law"  by  going  after 
it  himself  to  a  very  considerable  extent. 

The  history  of  the  development  of  these  diverse 
theories  of  criminal  procedure  is  too  involved  to  be 
discussed  here  at  any  length,  but  inasmuch  as  the 
most  natural  way  of  ascertaining  whether  or  not  a 
person  has  been  guilty  of  a  crime  is  to  question  him 
about  it,  the  leading  feature  of  the  Continental  sys- 
tem is  the  "question,"  or  inquisitorial  nature  of  the 
proceedings,  whereby  the  police  authorities,  who  are 
burdened  with  the  discovery  and  prosecution  of 
crime,  initiate  the  whole  matter  and  bring  the  defend- 
ant and  their  witnesses  before  an  examining  magis- 
trate in  the  first  instance.  The  procureur  (district 
attorney)  in  France  and  the  procuratore  del  re  in  Italy 
represent  the  government  and  are  part  of  the  magis- 
tracy. They  are  actually  quasi-judicial  in  their  char- 
acter, and  their  powers  are  infinitely  greater  than 
those  of  our  own  prosecutors,  who  occupy  a  rather 
anomalous  position,  akin  in  some  ways  to  that  of  a 
procureur,  and  at  the  same  time,  under  our  contro- 
versial practice,  acting  as  partisan  attorneys  for  the 
people  or  the  complainant. 

The  fundamental  proposition  under  the  inquisi- 
torial system  is  that  the  proceeding  is  the  govern- 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         189 

merit's  business,  to  be  conducted  by  its  officers  by 
means  of  such  investigations  and  interrogations  as 
will  most  likely  get  at  the  truth.  Obviously,  the 
quickest  and  surest  means  of  determining  the  guilt 
of  a  defendant  is  to  put  him  through  an  exhaustive 
examination  as  soon  as  possible  after  the  crime,  under 
such  surroundings  that,  while  his  rights  will  be  safe- 
guarded, the  information  at  his  disposal  will  be 
elicited  for  the  benefit  of  the  public.  The  fact  that 
in  the  past  the  Spanish  Inquisition  made  use  of  the 
rack  and  wheel,  or  that  to-day  the  "third  degree" 
is  freely  availed  of  by  the  American  police,  argues 
nothing  against  the  desirability  of  a  public  oral  ex- 
amination of  a  defendant  hi  a  criminal  case.  If  he 
be  given,  under  our  law,  the  right  to  testify,  why 
should  he  be  privileged  to  remain  silent? 

The  Anglo-Saxon  procedure,  growing  up  at  a  time 
when  death  was  the  punishment  for  almost  every 
sort  of  offence,  and  when  torture  was  freely  used  to 
extort  confessions  of  guilt,  developed  an  extraor- 
dinary tenderness  for  accused  persons,  which  has 
to-day  been  so  refined  and  extended  by  legislation 
in  America  that  there  is  a  strong  feeling  among  law- 
yers (including  President  Taft)  that  there  is  much 
in  our  practice  which  has  outlived  its  usefulness,  and 
that  some  elements  of  Latin  procedure,  including  the 
compulsory  interrogation  of  defendants  in  criminal 
cases,  have  a  good  deal  to  recommend  them. 

A  French  or  Italian  criminal  trial,  therefore,  must 
be  approached  with  the  full  understanding  that  it 
is  a  governmental  investigation,  free  from  many  of 


190         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

the  rules  of  evidence  which  Bentham  said  made  the 
English  procedure  "admirably  adapted  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  the  truth."  The  judge  is  charged  with  the 
duty  of  conducting  the  case.  He  does  all  the  ques- 
tioning. There  is  no  such  thing  as  cross-examina- 
tion at  all  in  our  sense,  that  is  to  say,  a  partisan  ex- 
amination to  show  that  the  witness  is  a  liar.  The 
judge  is  there  for  the  purpose  of  determining  that 
question  so  far  as  he  can,  and  the  jury  are  not  com- 
pelled to  listen  to  days  of  monotonous  interrogation 
during  which  the  witness  is  obliged  to  repeat  the 
same  evidence  over  and  over  again,  and  testify  as  to 
the  most  minute  details,  under  the  dawdling  of  law- 
yers paid  by  the  day,  who  not  only  "take  time,  but 
trespass  upon  eternity." 

Such  a  trial  is  conducted  very  much  as  if  the  judge 
were  a  private  individual  who  had  discovered  that 
one  of  his  employees  had  been  guilty  of  a  theft  and 
was  trying  to  ascertain  the  identity  of  the  guilty 
party.  Practically  anything  tending  to  shed  light 
upon  the  matter  is  acceptable  as  evidence,  and  the 
suspected  person  is  regarded  as  the  most  important 
witness  that  can  be  procured.  Finally,  and  in  natural 
course,  comes  the  confronting  of  accuser  and  accused. 

Then  fellow-servant  on  the  one  hand,  or  formal 
accuser  upon  the  other,  steps  forward,  and  they  go 
at  it  "hammer  and  tongs,"  revealing  to  their  master, 
the  public,  or  the  jury,  the  very  bottom  of  their  souls; 
for  no  man,  least  of  all  an  Italian,  can  engage  an  an- 
tagonist in  debate  over  the  question  of  his  own  guilt 
without  disclosing  exactly  what  manner  of  man  he  is. 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         191 

With  these  preliminary  considerations  upon  the 
fundamental  distinction  between  the  Latin  and  the 
Anglo-Saxon  criminal  procedure,  and  without  dis- 
cussing which  theory,  on  general  principles,  is  best 
calculated  to  arrive  at  a  definite  and  effective  con- 
clusion as  to  the  guilt  of  an  accused,  let  us  enter  the 
ancient  Church  of  San  Francesco  at  Viterbo,  and 
listen  for  a  moment  to  the  trial  of  the  thirty-six 
members  of  the  Neapolitan  Camorra. 

It  is  a  cool  spring  morning,  and  the  small  crowd 
which  daily  gathers  to  watch  the  arrival  of  the  prison- 
ers in  their  black-covered  wagons  has  dispersed;  the 
guard  of  infantry  has  marched  back  to  the  Rocca, 
once  the  castle  of  the  popes  and  now  a  barracks; 
and  only  a  couple  of  carabinieri  stand  before  the  door, 
their  white-gloved  hands  clasped  before  their  belts. 
Inside,  in  the  extreme  rear  of  the  church,  you  find 
yourself  in  a  small  inclosure  seating  a  couple  of  hun- 
dred people,  and  a  foot  or  so  lower  than  the  level  of 
the  rest  of  the  building.  This  is  full  of  visitors  from 
Rome,  wives  of  lawyers,  townspeople,  and  a  scatter- 
ing of  English  and  American  motorists.  A  rail  sep- 
arates this — the  only  provision  for  spectators — from 
the  real  court.  (At  the  Thaw  and  Patterson  trials 
the  guests  of  the  participants  and  officials  swarmed 
all  over  the  court-room,  around  and  beside  the  jury- 
box,  inside  the  rail  at  which  the  prisoners  were  seated, 
and  occasionally  even  shared  the  dais  with  the  judge.) 

We  will  assume  that  the  proceedings  have  not  yet 
begun,  and  that  the  advocates  in  their  black  gowns 
are  chatting  among  themselves  or  conferring  with 


192         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

their  clients  through  the  bars  of  the  cage,  which  is 
built  into  the  right-hand  side  of  the  church  and  com- 
pletely fills  it.  This  cage,  by  the  way,  is  an  absolute 
necessity  where  large  numbers  of  prisoners  are  tried 
together.  The  custom  of  isolating  the  defendant  in 
some  such  fashion  is  not  peculiar  to  Italy,  but  is  in 
use  in  our  own  country  as  well;  and  if  one  attends  a 
criminal  trial  in  the  city  of  Boston  he  will  see  the 
accused  elevated  in  a  kind  of  temporary  cell  in  the 
middle  of  the  court-room,  and  looking  as  if  he  were 
suspended  in  a  sort  of  human  bird-cage.  Where,  as 
in  most  jurisdictions  of  the  United  States,  every  de- 
fendant can  demand  a  separate  trial  as  of  right  (which 
he  almost  inevitably  does  demand),  no  inconvenience 
is  to  be  anticipated  from  allowing  him  his  temporary 
freedom  while  in  the  court-room  in  the  custody  of 
an  officer.  But  there  are  many  cases,  where  three 
or  more  defendants  are  tried  together,  when,  even 
in  New  York  City,  there  is  considerable  danger  that 
the  prisoners  may  seek  the  opportunity  to  carry  out 
a  vendetta  against  the  witnesses  or  to  revenge  them- 
selves upon  judge  or  prosecutor.  There  is  much  to 
be  said  in  favor  of  isolating  defendants  in  some  such 
way,  particularly  where  they  are  on  trial  for  atro- 
cious crimes  or  are  likely  to  prove  insane.  The  Ca- 
morrists  at  Viterbo  have  already  been  incarcerated 
for  over  four  years — one  of  them  died  in  prison — 
and  were  they  accessible  in  the  court-room  to  their 
relatives  or  criminal  associates  and  could  thus  pro- 
cure fire-arms  or  knives,  there  is  no  prophesying  what 
the  result  might  be  to  themselves  or  others.  Certain 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         193 

it  is  that  the  chief  witness,  the  informer  Abbate- 
maggio,  would  have  met  a  speedy  death  before  any 
of  his  testimony  had  been  given. 

On  the  opposite  or  left  side  of  the  church,  in  an 
elevated  box,  sit  the  jury,  who  keep  their  hats  on 
throughout  the  proceedings.  They  are  respectable- 
looking  citizens,  rather  more  prepossessing  than  one 
of  our  own  petit  juries  and  slightly  less  so  than  twelve 
men  drawn  from  one  of  the  New  York  City  special 
panels.  At  the  end  or  apex  of  the  church  is  a  curved 
bench  or  dais  with  five  seats.  In  the  middle,  under 
the  dome,  are  four  rows  of  desks,  with  chairs,  at 
which  sit  the  advocates,  one  or  more  for  each 
prisoner.  The  only  gallery,  which  is  above  and 
behind  the  jury-box,  is  given  over  to  the  press.  At 
all  the  doors  and  the  ends  of  the  aisles,  at  each  side 
of  the  judges'  dais,  and  in  front  of  the  prisoners' 
cage  stand  carabinieri,  in  their  picturesque  uniforms 
and  cocked  hats  with  red  and  blue  cockades,  and  a 
captain  of  carabinieri  stands  beside  each  witness  as 
he  gives  his  testimony.  Thus  the  court,  which  is  in 
the  form  of  a  cross,  is  naturally  divided  into  four 
parts  and  a  centre:  in  front  the  spectators,  on  the 
right  the  prisoners,  on  the  left  the  jury,  between 
them  the  lawyers,  and  at  the  end  the  judges  and 
officers  of  the  assize.  A  mellow  light  filters  down 
from  above,  rather  trying  to  the  eyes. 

The  Camorrists,  heavily  shackled,  are  brought  in 
from  a  side  entrance,  each  in  custody  of  two  carabi- 
nieri, their  chains  are  removed,  the  prisoners  are 
thrust  behind  the  bars,  and  the  guards  step  to  one 


194         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

side  and  remain  crowded  around  and  behind  the  cage 
during  the  session.  In  a  separate  steel  cage  sits  Ab- 
batemaggio,  the  informer,  at  an  oblique  distance  of 
about  five  feet  from  the  other  prisoners.  A  guard 
stands  between  the  two  cages.  If  one  meets  a  file  of 
these  prisoners  in  one  of  the  corridors,  he  will  be  sur- 
prised, and  perhaps  embarrassed,  to  find  that  each, 
as  he  approaches,  will  raise  his  shackled  hands  to  his 
head,  remove  his  hat,  and  bow  courteously,  with  a 
"  Buon  giorno  "  or  "  Buona  sera."  While  this  may  be 
one  of  the  universal  customs  of  a  polite  country,  one 
cannot  help  feeling  that  it  is  partly  due  to  an  instinc- 
tive desire  of  the  accused  for  recognition  as  human 
beings.  All  are  scrupulously  clean  and  dressed  in  the 
heights  of  Italian  fashion.  In  fact,  the  Camorrists 
are  much  the  best-dressed  persons  in  the  court-room, 
and  the  judicial  officials,  when  off  duty  and  in  fustian, 
look  a  shade  shabby  by  contrast.  The  funds  of  the 
Camorrists  seem  adequate  both  for  obtaining  wit- 
nesses and  retaining  lawyers;  and  the  difference  be- 
tween one's  mental  pictures  of  a  lot  of  Neapolitan 
thieves  and  cutthroats  and  the  apotheosized  defend- 
ants on  trial  is  at  first  somewhat  startling.  Looking 
at  them  across  the  court-room,  they  give  the  impres- 
sion of  being  exceptionally  intelligent  and  smartly 
dressed  men — not  unlike  a  section  of  the  grandstand 
taken  haphazard  at  a  National  League  game.  Closer 
scrutiny  reveals  the  merciless  lines  in  most  of  the 
faces,  and  the  catlike  shiftiness  of  the  eyes. 

As  for  the  lawyers, — the  avvocati, — they  seem  very 
much  like  any  group  of  American  civil  lawyers  and 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         195 

distinctly  superior  to  the  practitioners  in  our  criminal 
courts.  Many  are  young  and  hope  to  win  their 
spurs  in  this  celebrated  case.  Others  are  old  war- 
horses  whose  fortunes  are  tied  up  with  those  of  the 
Camorra.  At  least  one  such,  Avvocato  Lioy,  is  of 
necessity  giving  his  services  for  nothing.  But  it  is 
when  the  awocato  rises  to  address  the  court  that  the 
distinction  between  him  and  his  American  brother  be- 
comes obvious;  for  he  is  an  expert  speaker,  trained 
in  diction,  enunciation,  and  delivery,  and  rarely  in 
our  own  country  (save  on  the  stage  or  in  the  pulpit) 
will  one  hear  such  uniform  fluency  and  eloquence. 
Nor  is  the  speech  of  the  advocate  less  convincing  for 
its  excellence,  for  these  young  men  put  a  fire  and 
zeal  into  what  they  say  that  compel  attention. 

Now,  if  the  prisoners  are  all  seated,  the  captain  of 
carabinieri  raps  upon  the  floor  with  his  scabbard,  and 
the  occupants  of  the  room,  prisoners,  advocates,  jury, 
and  spectators,  rise  as  the  president,  vice-president, 
prosecutor,  vice-prosecutor,  and  cancelliere  enter  in 
their  robes.  The  president  makes  a  bow,  the  others 
bow  a  little,  the  lawyers  bow,  and  everybody  sits 
down — that  is  to  say,  everybody  who  has  arisen;  for 
Don  Giro  Vitozzi  and  "Professor"  Rapi,  who  sit 
outside  and  in  front  of  the  cage  (the  "professor"  has 
already  been  confined  longer  than  any  term  to  which 
he  could  be  sentenced,  and  both  have  pleaded  sick- 
ness as  an  excuse  for  leniency),  make  a  point  of  show- 
ing their  superiority  to  the  vulgar  herd  by  waiting 
until  the  last  moment  and  then  giving  a  partial  but 
ineffectual  motion  as  if  to  stand. 


196         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

The  five  men  upon  the  dias  are,  however,  worthy 
of  considerable  attention.  The  president,  who  oc- 
cupies the  centre  seat,  is  a  stout,  heavily  built, 
" stocky"  man  with  a  brownish-gray  beard.  In  his 
robes  he  is  an  imposing  and  dignified  figure,  in  spite 
of  his  lack  of  height.  All  wear  gowns  with  red  and 
gold  braid  and  tassels,  and  little  round  caps  with  red 
"topknots"  and  gold  bands.  This  last  ornament  is 
omitted  from  the  uniform  of  the  cancelliere,  who  is 
the  official  scribe  or  recorder  of  the  court.  And  just 
here  is  noticeable  a  feature  which  tends  to  accelerate 
the  proceedings,  for  there  are  no  shorthand  minutes 
of  the  testimony,  and  only  a  rough  digest  of  what 
goes  on  is  made.  This  is,  for  the  most  part,  dictated 
by  the  president,  under  the  correction  of  the  advo- 
cates and  the  officers  of  the  court,  who  courteously 
interrupt  if  the  record  appears  to  them  inaccurate. 
If  they  raise  no  objection  the  record  stands  as  given. 
Thus  thousands  of  pages  of  generally  useless  matter 
are  done  away  with,  and  the  record  remains  more 
like  the  "notes"  of  a  careful  and  painstaking  Eng- 
lish judge.  Any  particular  bit  of  testimony  or  the 
gist  of  it  can  usually  be  found  very  quickly,  without 
(as  in  our  own  courts  of  law)  the  stenographer  hav- 
ing to  wade  through  hundreds  of  pages  of  questions 
and  answers  before  the  matter  wanted  can  be  un- 
earthed, buried,  like  as  not,  under  an  avalanche  of 
objections,  exceptions,  wrangles  of  counsel,  and  irrele- 
vant or  "stricken  out"  testimony. 

At  the  left  of  the  semicircle  sits  the  acting  pro- 
curatore  del  re — another  small  man  who,  on  the  bench, 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         197 

makes  a  wonderfully  dignified  impression.  He  plays 
almost  as  important  a  part  in  the  proceedings  as  the 
president  himself,  and  is  treated  with  almost  equal 
consideration.  This  is  Cavaliere  Santaro,  one  of  the 
most  learned  and  eloquent  lawyers  in  Italy.  To  hear 
him  argue  a  point  in  his  crisp,  clean-cut,  melodious 
voice  is  to  realize  how  far  superior  Italian  public 
speaking  is  to  the  kind  of  oratory  prevalent  in  our 
courts,  and  national  legislature,  and  on  most  public 
occasions  throughout  the  United  States.  Beside  both 
the  president  and  the  procuratore  del  re  sits  a  "vice," 
or  assistant,  to  each,  to  take  his  place  when  absent 
and  to  act  as  associate  at  other  times.  The  cancelliere 
occupies  the  seat  upon  the  right  nearest  the  prisoners' 
cage. 

The  president  having  taken  his  place,  the  first 
order  of  the  day  is  the  reading  or  revision  of  all  or 
part  of  the  record  of  the  preceding  session.  This  is 
done  by  the  cancelliere  who,  from  time  to  tune,  is 
interrupted  by  the  lawyers,  Abbatemaggio,  or  the 
prisoners.  These  interruptions  are  usually  to  the 
point,  and  are  quickly  disposed  of  by  the  judge,  al- 
though he  may  allow  an  argument  thereon  at  some 
length  from  one  of  the  advocates.  The  court  then 
proceeds  with  the  introduction  of  evidence,  docu- 
mentary or  otherwise,  the  examination  of  the  wit- 
nesses, or  the  confronting  of  the  prisoners  with  their 
accusers.  Now  is  immediately  observable  for  the 
first  time  the  characteristic  of  Italian  criminal  pro- 
cedure which  has  been  so  much  misrepresented  and 
has  been  the  cause  of  such  adverse  criticism  in  the 


198         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

United  States  and  England — namely,  the  constant 
interruption  of  the  proceedings  by  argument  or  com- 
ment from  the  lawyers,  and  by  remarks  and  contra- 
dictions from  the  prisoners  and  witnesses.  These  oc- 
casionally degenerate  into  altercations  of  a  more  or 
less  personal  nature;  but  they  are  generally  stilled 
at  a  single  word  of  caution  from  the  judge,  and  serve 
to  bring  out  and  accentuate  the  different  points  at 
issue  and  to  make  clear  the  position  of  the  different 
parties.  When  such  interruptions  occur,  the  pro- 
ceedings ordinarily  resemble  a  joint  discussion  going 
on  among  a  fairly  large  gathering  of  people  presided 
over  by  a  skilful  moderator. 

A  witness  is  testifying.  In  the  middle  of  it  (and 
"it"  consists  of  not  only  what  the  witness  has  seen, 
but  what  he  has  been  told  and  believes)  one  of  the 
prisoners  rises  and  cries  out: 

"That  is  not  so!  He  is  a  liar!  Abbatemaggio 
swore  thus  and  so." 

"Nothing  of  the  kind!"  retorts  the  witness  im- 
patiently. 

"  Yes !  Yes ! "  or  "  No !  No ! "  chime  in  the  advocates. 

"Excellency!  Excellency!"  exclaims  Abbatemag- 
gio himself,  jumping  to  his  feet  in  his  cage.  "I  said 
in  my  testimony  that  Cuocolo  did  accuse  Erricone," 
etc.  And  he  goes  on  for  two  or  three  minutes,  ex- 
plaining just  what  he  did  or  did  not  say  or  mean, 
while  the  president  listens  until  he  has  had  sufficient 
enlightenment,  and  stops  him  with  a  sharp  "Basta!" 

("Enough!"). 
The  incident  (whatever  its  nature)  usually  tends 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         199 

to  elucidate  the  matter,  and  while  to  an  outsider, 
especially  one  not  familiar  with  Italian  dialects,  the 
effect  may  be  one  of  temporary  confusion,  it  is  never- 
theless not  as  disorderly  as  it  seems,  and  the  presi- 
dent rarely  (so  far  as  the  writer  could  see  during  many 
days  of  observation)  loses  complete  command  of  his 
court,  or  permits  any  one  to  go  on  talking  unless  for 
a  clear  and  useful  purpose.  At  times,  when  every- 
body seemed  to  be  talking  at  once,  and  several  law- 
yers, Abbatemaggio,  and  one  or  two  prisoners  were 
on  their  feet  together,  his  handling  of  the  situation 
was  little  short  of  marvellous,  for  he  would  almost 
simultaneously  silence  one  with  a  sharp  "S-s-s!" 
shake  his  head  at  another,  direct  a  third  to  sit  down, 
and  listen  to  a  fourth  until  he  stilled  him  with  a  well- 
directed  "Basta!"  When  the  shouting  is  over,  one 
usually  finds  that  who  is  the  liar  has  been  pretty 
clearly  demonstrated. 

In  this  connection,  however,  it  should  be  said  that 
the  Writer  was  perhaps  fortunate  (or  unfortunate,  as 
the  reader  may  prefer)  in  not  being  present  on  those 
days  when  the  scenes  of  greatest  excitement  and  con- 
fusion occurred.  Several  times,  it  is  true,  President 
Bianchi  has  preferred  to  adjourn  court  entirely  on 
account  of  the  uproar,  rather  than  take  extreme 
measures  against  individual  defendants  or  witnesses. 
Thus,  during  the  entire  conduct  of  the  case  and  in 
spite  of  the  grossest  provocation,  he  has  ordered  the 
forcible  removal  of  only  three  defendants — that  of 
Morro  on  June  21,  1911,  and  of  Alfano  and  Abbate- 
maggio on  July  21, 1911.  On  several  other  occasions 


200         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

he  has  adopted  the  more  gentle  expedient  of  adjourn- 
ing the  proceedings  and  clearing  the  court,  and  this 
has  resulted  in  a  certain  amount  of  criticism  from  the 
Italian  bar,  which  otherwise  regards  his  presiding  as 
a  model  of  efficiency.  The  only  adverse  comment 
that  the  writer  has  heard  in  Italy,  either  of  the  presi- 
dent or  the  procuratore  del  re,  is  that  both  are  some- 
what lenient  toward  the  conduct  of  the  prisoners  and 
their  advocates,  and  lack  strength  in  dealing  with 
exigencies  of  the  character  just  described.  In  the 
long  run,  however,  if  such  criticism  be  just,  such  an 
attitude  is  bound  to  be  in  favor  of  justice,  and  will 
irresistibly  convince  the  public  and  the  world  at  large 
that  this  is  no  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  government 
to  "railroad"  a  lot  of  suspected  undesirables  at  any 
cost,  whatever  the  evidence  may  be. 

Before  commenting  too  harshly  upon  this  mote  in 
the  eye  of  Italian  procedure,  it  may  not  be  unwise  to 
consider  whether  any  similar  beam  exists  in  our  own. 
Certainly  there  is  a  deal  of  interruption,  contradic- 
tion, and  disputation  in  our  own  criminal  courts 
which  sometimes  is  not  only  undignified,  but  fre- 
quently ends  in  an  unseemly  dispute  between  judge 
and  lawyers.  Contempt  of  court  is  very  general  in 
the  United  States,  and  we  have  practically  no  means 
for  punishing  it.  Moreover,  these  scenes  in  our  own 
courts  do  not  usually  assist  in  getting  at  the  truth. 
With  us,  once  a  witness  has  spoken  and  his  testi- 
mony has  become  a  matter  of  record,  whether  he  has 
said  what  he  meant  to  say  or  not  (under  the  compli- 
cated questions  put  in  examination  and  cross-exam- 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         201 

ination),  or  whether  or  not  he  has  succeeded  in  giving 
an  accurate  impression  of  what  he  saw  or  knows,  he 
is  hustled  out  of  the  way  and  made  to  keep  silence. 
He  has  little,  if  any,  chance  to  explain  or  annotate  his 
testimony.  A  defendant  may  go  to  jail  or  be  turned 
loose  on  the  community  because  the  witness  really 
didn't  get  a  chance  to  tell  his  own  story  in  his  own 
way.  Now,  the  witness's  own  story  in  precisely  his 
own  way  is  just  what  they  are  looking  for  under  the 
inquisitorial  procedure,  and  if  he  is  misinterpreted 
they  want  to  know  it.  The  process  may  take  longer, 
but  it  makes  for  getting  at  the  truth,  and  the  Italians 
regard  a  criminal  trial  as  of  even  more  importance 
than  do  some  of  our  judges,  who  often  seem  more 
anxious  to  get  through  a  record-breaking  calendar 
and  "dispose  of"  a  huge  batch  of  cases  than  to  get 
at  the  exact  facts  in  any  particular  one.  There  is 
nothing  "hit  or  miss"  about  the  Continental  method. 
Whatever  its  shortcomings,  whatever  its  limitations 
to  the  cold  Anglo-Saxon  mind,  it  brings  out  all  the 
details  and  the  witness's  reasons.  At  an  Italian  trial 
a  witness  might  testify  (and  his  evidence  be  consid- 
ered as  important)  that  he  heard  sounds  of  a  scuffle 
and  a  man's  voice  exclaim,  "You  have  stabbed  me, 
Adolfo!"  that  somebody  darted  across  the  street  and 
into  an  alley,  that  an  old  woman  whom  he  identifies 
in  court  as  the  deceased's  mother,  and  who  was 
standing  beside  him,  cried  out,  "That  is  my  son's 
voice!"  and  that  three  or  four  persons  came  running 
up  from  several  different  locations,  each  of  whom 
described,  circumstantially  and  independently,  a 


202         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

murder  which  he  had  seen  perpetrated,  identifying 
the  assassin  by  name. 

In  America  it  is  doubtful  whether  in  most  juris- 
dictions the  witness  would  be  permitted  to  testify 
to  anything  except  that  he  heard  a  scuffle,  saw  a 
man  run  away,  and  that  an  old  woman  and  several 
other  people  thereupon  said  something. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  trial  of  the  Ca- 
morra  is  being  conducted  with  the  calm  of  a  New 
England  Sabbath  service;  but  the  writer  wishes  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  the  confusion,  such  as  it  is, 
serves  a  certain  purpose,  and  that  the  yellings  and 
heartrending  outcries  described  by  the  newspaper 
correspondents  are  only  occasional  and  much  ex- 
aggerated— except  in  so  far  as  they  might  occur  at 
an  Italian  trial  in  America.  Any  one  who  has  been 
present  at  many  murder  trials  in  New  York  knows 
that  outbreaks  on  the  part  of  Italian  prisoners  are 
to  be  anticipated  and  are  frequent  if  not  customary. 
The  writer  recalls  more  than  one  case  where  the  de- 
fendant shrieked  and  rolled  on  the  floor,  clutching  at 
the  legs  of  tables,  chairs,  and  officers,  until  dragged 
by  main  force  from  the  court-room.  And  at  Viterbo 
they  are  trying  thirty-six  Italians  at  the  same  time; 
and  every  person  participating  in  or  connected  with 
the  affair  is  an  Italian,  sharing  in  the  excitability  and 
emotional  temperament  of  his  fellows. 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  this  particular  prosecu- 
tion is  that  (due  doubtless  to  the  strength  and  ability 
of  the  presiding  judge),  in  spite  of  all  interruptions 
and  the  freedom  of  discussion,  the  taking  of  evidence 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         203 

proceeds  with  a  rapidity  greater  than  in  America,  for 
the  reason  that  there  are  no  objections  or  exceptions, 
or  attendant  argument,  and,  above  all,  no  cross-exam- 
ination, except  such  questions  as  are  put  by  the  judge 
himself  at  the  request  of  the  advocates. 

Finally,  the  system  of  the  confronto,  or  confronting 
of  the  accused  by  his  accuser,  deserves  a  word  of 
commendation,  for  no  method  could  possibly  be  de- 
vised whereby  the  real  character  and  comparative 
truthfulness  of  each  would  be  so  readily  disclosed. 
The  defendant  is  given  on  this  occasion  free  scope 
to  cross-examine  the  witness  and  deny  or  refute  what 
he  says,  and  it  takes  ordinarily  but  a  few  minutes 
before  the  mask  is  torn  aside  and  each  pictures  him- 
self in  his  true  colors.  Our  procedure  tends  to  deprive 
the  witnesses  of  personality  and  to  reduce  them  all 
to  a  row  of  preternaturally  solemn  and  formal  pup- 
pets. It  is  probably  true  that  in  most  criminal  cases 
in  America  the  defendant  is  convicted  or  acquitted 
without  the  jury  having  any  very  clear  idea  of  what 
sort  of  person  he  really  is.  On  the  day  of  his  trial 
the  prisoner  makes  a  careful  toilet,  is  cleanly  shaved, 
and  dons  a  new  suit  of  clothes  and  fresh  linen.  The 
chances  are  that,  as  he  sits  at  the  bar  of  justice,  he 
will  make  at  least  as  good  and  very  possibly  a  more 
favorable  impression  upon  the  jury  than  the  witnesses 
against  him,  who  have  far  less  at  stake  than  he.  Each 
takes  the  stand  and  is  sworn  to  tell  the  truth,  so  far 
as  they  will  be  permitted  to  do  so  under  our  rules  of 
evidence.  Then  the  district  attorney  proceeds  to 
try  to  extract  their  story  of  the  crime  under  a  storm 


204         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

of  objections,  exceptions,  and  hasty  rulings  from  the 
judge.  Then  the  prisoner's  lawyer  (who  can  take 
all  the  liberties  he  wants,  as  the  State  has  no  appeal 
in  case  of  an  acquittal)  proceeds  to  mix  things  up 
generally  by  an  unfair  and  confusing  cross-examina- 
tion. At  last  the  defendant  is  called,  and  marches 
to  the  stand,  looking  like  an  early  Christian  martyr. 
He  is  carefully  interrogated  by  his  lawyer,  who  per- 
mits him  (if  he  be  wise)  to  do  nothing  but  deny  the 
salient  facts  against  him.  The  district  attorney,  to 
be  sure,  has  the  right  of  cross-examination,  but  a  skil- 
ful criminal  lawyer  has  plenty  of  opportunities  to 
"nurse"  his  client  along  and  guide  him  over  pitfalls; 
and  when  all  is  over  the  jury  have  formed  no  valuable 
or  accurate  impression  of  the  defendant's  real  char- 
acter and  personality — whether  or  not,  in  other 
words,  he  is  the  kind  of  man  who  would  have  done 
such  a  thing. 

In  Italy  (to  use  vulgar  English)  they  "sic"  them 
at  each  other  and  let  them  fight  it  out,  and  while  the 
language  of  the  participants  is  often  not  parliamen- 
tary, the  knowledge  that  they  are  being  watched  by 
the  judge  and  jury  has  a  restraining  effect,  and  the 
presence  of  the  carabinieri  makes  violence  no  more 
likely  than  in  our  own  courts.  Occasionally,  in  Amer- 
ica, where  a  prisoner  insists  on  conducting  his  own 
defence,  a  similar  scene  may  be  witnessed — always,  it 
may  be  affirmed,  to  the  enlightenment  of  the  jury. 
On  the  other  hand,  most  confrontations  are  attended 
with  few  sensational  incidents  or  emotional  outbreaks. 

The  writer  was  fortunate  enough  to  be  present 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         205 

when  "Professor"  Rapi  was  confronted  by  Gennaro 
Abbatemaggio,  and,  to  his  surprise,  found  that  the 
proceeding,  instead  of  being  interspersed  with  yells 
of  rage  and  vehement  invocations  to  Heaven, 
closely  resembled  a  somewhat  personal  argument  be- 
tween two  highly  intelligent  and  deeply  interested 
men  of  affairs.  Whatever  may  be  Rapi's  real  char- 
acter (and  he  is  said  to  supply  a  large jpart  of  the 
brains  of  the  Camorra,  as  well  as  handling  all  its 
funds),  he  is,  as  he  stands  up  in  court,  a  fine-looking, 
elegantly  dressed  man,  of  polished  manners  and 
speech.  If  the  evidence  against  him  is  to  be  believed, 
however,  his  mask  of  gentility  covers  a  heart  of  med- 
iseval  cruelty  and  cunning,  for  he  is  alleged  to  have 
made  the  plans  and  given  the  final  directions  to  Sor- 
tino  for  the  murder  of  the  Cuocolos.  Rapi  is  a  cele- 
brated gambler,  and  as  such  may  have  had  the  ac- 
quaintance of  some  decadent  members  of  the  Italian 
aristocracy,  who  not  only  knew  him  in  the  betting 
ring  at  the  races,  but  frequented  his  establishment  in 
Naples,  which  he  called  the  "Southern  Italy  Club." 
In  1875,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  he  won  against  four 
hundred  candidates  the  position  of  instructor  in  clas- 
sical languages  in  the  municipality  of  Naples.  Some 
ten  years  later,  in  1884,  he  moved  with  his  parents 
to  France.  At  this  time  he  was  suspected  of  having 
something  to  do  with  the  murder  of  a  Camorrist 
youth,  named  Giacomo  Pasquino,  who,  in  fact,  was 
killed  in  a  duel  with  a  fellow  member  of  the  society. 
From  that  time  on  Rapi  became  a  professional 
gambler,  and  as  such  was  expelled  from  France  in 


206         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

1902.  Later  he  returned  to  Naples  and  opened  a  sort 
of  "Canfield's"  there.  At  any  rate,  he  boasts  that  it 
was  the  centre  of  attraction  for  dukes  and  princes. 
That  he  had  any  sort  of  acquaintance  with  or  ad- 
mission to  aristocratic  circles  is  entirely  untrue;  but 
he  certainly  was  a  figure  in  the  fast  life  of  the  town; 
and  used  what  position  he  had  to  further  the  ends 
of  the  Camorra.  It  is  alleged  that  he  was  the  actual 
treasurer  of  the  Camorra,  and  disbursed  the  funds 
of  its  central  organization,  apportioning  the  pro- 
ceeds of  robberies  and  burglaries  among  the  partici- 
pants, and  acting  as  head  receiver  for  all  stolen  goods. 
Certainly  he  was  a  friend  of  "Erricone"  and  an  asso- 
ciate of  well-known  Camorrists,  and  he  was  one  of 
the  five  arrested  immediately  after  the  Cuocolo  mur- 
ders on  suspicion  of  complicity,  because  of  his  known 
presence  on  the  night  of  the  crime  at  Torre  del  Greco, 
not  far  from  the  place  where  the  murder  of  Gennaro 
Cuocolo  was  perpetrated.  For  fifty-two  days  he  re- 
mained in  prison,  and  was  then  set  at  liberty  through 
the  efforts  of  Father  Giro  Vitozzi.  He  continued  to 
reside  in  Naples  until  April,  1908,  when  the  French 
decree  against  him  was  cancelled  and  he  returned  to 
Paris,  after  holding  a  sort  of  informal  levee  at  the 
Naples  railroad  station,  where  many  persons  of  local 
distinction,  journalists,  and  others  came  to  see  him 
off.  It  was  in  the  following  June  that  he  says  he  read 
in  a  Paris  paper  that  his  departure  from  Naples  was 
regarded  as  a  flight.  He  wired  to  the  procuratore  del 
re  at  Naples,  offering  to  place  himself  absolutely  at 
the  disposition  of  the  authorities;  but,  receiving  no 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         207 

response,  he  returned  by  train  to  Naples  to  present 
himself  before  the  magistrates.  He  was  promptly 
arrested  en  route,  and  for  four  years  has  been  in  jail, 
being  questioned  by  the  authorities  on  only  three 
occasions  during  that  period.  He  claims  that  at  the 
time  of  the  murder  he  was  living  in  England,  and  his 
elaborate  alibi  is  supported  by  a  number  of  witnesses 
whose  testimony  is  more  or  less  relevant. 

Without  dilating  on  the  individual  history  of  this 
sleek  gentleman,  be  he  merely  gambler  or  full-fledged 
accomplice  in  many  murders,  it  is  enough  to  say  that 
when  confronted  by  Abbatemaggio  he  conducted 
himself  with  the  most  suave  and  courteous  modera- 
tion. Alternately  he  would  politely  engage  the  in- 
former in  argument  or  ask  him  a  question  or  two, 
and  then  in  polished  sentences  would  address  the 
jury  and  spectators. 

He  is  the  antithesis  of  Abbatemaggio,  who  has  an 
insolent  confidence  and  braggadocio  about  him  that 
carry  with  them  a  certain  first-hand  impression  of 
sincerity.  In  fact,  the  fiery  little  black-haired  coach- 
man has  proved  so  convincing  to  the  public  that  the 
Camorrists  have  been  driven  to  allege  that  he  is  mad. 
He  gives  no  indication  of  madness,  however,  although 
the  government,  to  refute  any  such  contention,  has 
an  alienist,  Professor  Otto  Lenghi,  in  court  to  keep 
him  under  constant  surveillance.  His  memory  is  as- 
tonishing and  uncannily  accurate.  His  mind  works 
with  marvellous  rapidity,  and  had  he  been  born  in  a 
different  environment  he  would  have  made  his  mark 
in  almost  any  line  that  he  might  have  chosen.  He 


208         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

has  all  the  instincts  and  tricks  of  the  actor,  is  a  mas- 
ter of  repartee,  extremely  witty,  with  a  tongue  like 
a  razor,  and  delights  the  spectators  with  his  sallies 
and  impertinences.  Altogether  Abbatemaggio  is  the 
centre  of  attraction  at  Viterbo — and  knows  it.  He 
makes  the  court  wait  on  his  health  and  convenience, 
and  has  evidently  made  up  his  mind  that,  if  his  life 
is  to  be  short,  he  will  at  least  make  it  as  merry  as  pos- 
sible. Naturally  he  is  a  sort  of  popular  idol,  and  a 
confronto  in  which  he  is  one  of  the  participants 
draws  a  crowd  of  the  townspeople,  who  applaud  his 
gibes  and  epigrams  and  jeer  at  his  Camorrist  oppo- 
nent. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  Rapi-Abbatemaggio  con- 
fronto the  "Professor"  arose  with  great  dignity, 
bowed  low  to  the  court  and  jury,  folded  his  hands 
over  his  stomach,  and  faced  the  audience  with  an  air 
of  patient  resignation.  Then  the  captain  of  carabi- 
nieri  unlocked  Abbatemaggio 's  cage,  and  the  little 
coachman  sprang  to  his  feet,  gave  a  twirl  to  his  mous- 
tache and  a  contemptuous  glance  at  Rapi  as  if  to  say, 
"Look  at  the  old  faker!  See  how  I  shall  show  him 
up!" 

With  an  attitude  respectful  toward  the  court  and 
scornful  toward  Rapi,  he  takes  his  stand  by  the  pro- 
curators del  re  and  awaits  his  antagonist's  attack. 
The  "Professor"  accosts  him  gently,  almost  pathet- 
ically. Abbatemaggio  answers  in  cold,  unsympa- 
thetic tones  that  tell  the  spectators  that  they  must 
not  be  deceived  by  the  oily  address  of  this  arch-con- 
spirator. But  Rapi,  with  his  magnificent  voice,  is  a 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         209 

foe  to  be  reckoned  with,  and  presently  he  enters  upon 
a  denunciation  of  the  informer  that  is  distinctly  elo- 
quent and  full  of  vehement  sarcasm.  Abbatemaggio 
flushes  and  interrupts  him,  the  "Professor"  attempts 
to  proceed,  but  the  little  coachman  sweeps  him  out 
of  the  way  and  pours  forth  a  rapid-fire  volley  of  Nea- 
politan dialect  in  which  he  accuses  Rapi  of  being  a 
hypocrite  and  a  liar  and  a  man  who  lives  on  the  crim- 
inality of  others,  referring  specifically  to  various  en- 
terprises in  which  they  have  both  been  engaged  as 
partners.  He  pauses  for  breath,  and  Rapi  plunges 
in,  contradicting,  denouncing,  and  accusing  in  turn. 
The  prisoners  by  inter jectory  exclamations  show  their 
approval. 

"Sh-sh-sh!"  remarks  il  presidents,  raising  a  finger. 

"Excellency !  Excellency !"  exclaims  Abbatemaggio 
deprecatingly,  as  if  pained  that  the  judge  should  be 
compelled  to  listen  to  such  an  outburst. 

Presently  he  can  restrain  himself  no  longer,  and 
both  he  and  Rapi  begin  simultaneously  to  harangue 
the  court,  until  the  president  orders  Abbatemaggio 
to  stop  and  the  captain  of  carabinieri  touches  Rapi 
on  the  shoulder.  The  latter  is  now  reduced  to  tears 
and  wrings  his  hands  as  he  calls  his  aged  mother  to 
witness  that  he  is  an  innocent  man!  Soon  order  is 
restored,  and  the  confronto  concludes  with  a  sort  of 
summing  up  of  his  defence  on  the  part  of  the  "Pro- 
fessor." It  is  a  model  of  rhetoric,  rather  too  care- 
fully calculated  to  appear  as  sincere  as  his  previous 
outbursts.  He  calls  down  the  curses  of  God  upon  Ab- 
batemaggio, who  listens  contemptuously;  he  pro- 


210         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

tests  the  purity  of  his  life  and  motives;  he  weeps  at 
the  irony  of  fate  that  keeps  him — the  merest  ob- 
ject of  suspicion — confined  in  a  loathsome  prison. 
Then  he  bows  and  resumes  his  seat  by  the  side  of 
Father  Giro  Vitozzi,  to  whom,  amid  the  laughter  of 
the  spectators,  he  has  referred  as  "that  holy  man 
there."  And,  apart  from  the  argument  between  him 
and  Abbatemaggio,  there  has  really  been  no  more 
denunciation,  no  more  emotion,  no  more  tears,  than 
if  an  ordinary  criminal  attorney  in  a  New  York  City 
court  were  summing  up  an  important  case. 

Court  adjourns.  No  sooner  has  the  judge  de- 
parted than  an  outcry  is  heard  from  the  cage. 

"I  am  tired — tired — tired!"  exclaims  an  agonized 
voice.  "  I  have  been  in  prison  for  five  years !  Every- 
body else  talks  and  I  have  to  listen.  I  am  not  allowed 
to  speak,  and  nothing  ever  happens!  It  is  intermin- 
able !  I  cannot  stand  it ! " 

It  is  "Erricone"  having  one  of  his  periodical  mo- 
ments of  relief.  After  all,  one  is  not  inclined  to 
blame  him  very  much,  for  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
truth  in  what  he  says — owing  to  the  way  the  case 
was  bungled  in  its  earlier  stages.  The  carabinieri 
rush  up,  " Erricone"  is  pacified  by  his  fellow  Camor- 
rists,  and  quiet  is  restored.  One  inquires  if  there  is 
generally  any  more  excitement  than  has  just  occurred, 
and  is  told  that  it  has  been  quite  a  sensational  day, 
but  then — that  " Erricone"  is  always  "yelling."  A 
good  many  defendants  make  a  noise  and  carry  on — 
and  so  do  their  relatives — after  court  has  adjourned, 
in  America. 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         211 

One  is  in  doubt  whether  to  believe  Abbatemaggio 
on  the  one  hand  or  Rapi  on  the  other,  and  ends  by 
concluding  that  it  would  be  utterly  impossible  to 
believe  either.  Both  were  acting,  both  playing  to  the 
gallery.  You  know  Rapi  is  a  crook,  and — well  you 
wouldn't  trust  Abbatemaggio,  either,  around  the  cor- 
ner. And,  after  all,  it  is  the  word  of  the  one  against 
that  of  the  other  so  far  as  any  particular  defendant 
is  concerned.  But  one  fixed  impression  remains — 
that  of  the  aplomb,  intelligence,  and  cleverness  of 
these  men,  and  the  danger  to  a  society  in  which  they 
and  their  associates  follow  crime  as  a  profession. 
Once  more  you  study  the  faces  of  the  well-dressed 
prisoners  in  the  cage,  of  the  four  alleged  assassins  of 
Cuocolo — Morra,  Sortino,  de  Gennaro,  and  Cerrato; 
of  Giuseppe  Salvi,  the  murderer  of  Maria  Cutinelli; 
of  Luigi  Fucci,  the  dummy  head  of  the  Camorra;  of 
"Erricone"  Alfano,  the  wolfish  supreme  chief  and 
dictator  of  the  society;  of  Luigi  Arena,  the  captain 
of  the  Neapolitan  burglars;  of  that  mediaeval  ras- 
cal, "Father"  Giro  Vitozzi,  the  most  picturesque 
figure  of  the  lot;  of  Desiderio,  head  of  petty  black- 
mailing and  tribute-levying  industry;  of  Maria  Sten- 
dardo,  whose  house  was  a  Camorrist  hell;  and  of 
Rapi,  the  gambling  "professor"  and  "Moriarty"  of 
Naples — and  you  know  instinctively  that,  whether 
as  an  abstract  proposition  Abbatemaggio  conveys  an 
impression  of  absolute  honesty  or  not,  what  he  has 
said  is  true  and  that  this  is  the  Camorra — the  real 
Camorra,  vile,  heartless,  treacherous! 

Then,  if  you  were  asked  to  give  your  impressions 


212         AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO 

of  the  way  the  trial  was  being  carried  on,  you  would 
probably  say  that,  considering  the  magnitude  of  the 
task  involved,  the  mass  of  evidence  (there  are  forty 
volumes  of  the  preliminary  examinations),  the  great 
number  of  prisoners  and  the  multitude  of  witnesses, 
and  the  latitude  allowed  under  the  Italian  law  in  the 
matter  of  taking  testimony,  the  trial  was  being  con- 
ducted considerably  faster  than  would  be  probable  in 
America  under  like  conditions;  that  the  methods  fol- 
lowed are  admirably  calculated  to  ascertain  the  truth 
or  falsity  of  the  charges;  that  the  judge  presides  with 
extreme  fairness,  courtesy,  and  ability;  that,  all  things 
considered,  there  is,  as  a  rule,  less  confusion  or  dis- 
order than  would  be  naturally  expected — that,  in  a 
word,  the  Italian  government  is  making  a  good  job 
of  it,  and  deserves  to  be  congratulated. 

Indeed,  so  far  as  the  procedure  is  concerned,  it  is 
not  so  very  different  from  our  own,  and,  were  it  not 
for  the  presence  of  the  uniforms  of  the  carabinieri 
and  the  officers  of  infantry  in  the  court-room,  and 
the  huge  cage  in  which  the  prisoners  are  confined, 
one  could  easily  imagine  one's  self  in  a  court  in  Amer- 
ica. The  conduct  of  the  trial  is  far  more  free,  far  less 
formal,  than  with  us — a  fact  which,  the  writer  believes, 
makes  in  the  end  for  effectiveness,  although  the  ex- 
citability of  the  Italian  temperament  occasionally 
creates  something  of  an  uproar,  which  calls  for  a 
suspension  of  proceedings.  Doubtless  the  prisoners 
give  vent  to  cries  of  rage  and  humiliation;  perhaps 
one  or  two  of  them  in  the  course  of  the  trial  may 
faint  or  have  fits  (such  things  happen  with  us) ;  the 


AN  AMERICAN  AT  VITERBO         213 

judge  and  lawyers  may  squabble,  and  accuser  and  ac- 
cused roundly  curse  each  other.  Such  things  could 
hardly  help  occurring  in  a  trial  lasting,  perhaps,  a  year. 
In  fact,  deaths  and  births  have  occurred  among  them 
during  this  period,  for  Giro  Alfano  has  passed  away 
and  Maria  Stendardo  has  given  birth  to  a  child;  but, 
on  the  whole,  there  is  probably  no  more  excitement, 
no  more  confusion,  no  more  bombast,  and  vastly  less 
sensationalism  than  if  thirty-six  members  of  the  Black 
Hand  were  being  tried  en  masse  in  one  of  our  own 
criminal  courts  for  a  double  murder,  involving  the 
existence  of  a  criminal  society  whose  ramifications 
extended  into  the  national  legislature  and  whose  affil- 
iations embraced  the  leaders  of  a  local  political 
organization  and  many  officials  and  members  of  the 
New  York  police. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

THERE  are  a  million  and  a  half  of  Italians  in  the 
United  States,  of  whom  nearly  six  hundred  thousand 
reside  in  New  York  City — more  than  in  Rome  itself. 
Naples  alone  of  all  the  cities  of  Italy  has  so  large  an 
Italian  population;  while  Boston  has  one  hundred 
thousand,  Philadelphia  one  hundred  thousand,  San 
Francisco  seventy  thousand,  New  Orleans  seventy 
thousand,  Chicago  sixty  thousand,  Denver  twenty- 
five  thousand,  Pittsburg  twenty-five  thousand,  Bal- 
timore twenty  thousand,  and  there  are  extensive 
colonies,  often  numbering  as  many  as  ten  thousand, 
in  several  other  cities. 

So  vast  a  foreign-born  population  is  bound  to  con- 
tain elements  of  both  strength  and  weakness.  The 
north  Italians  are  molto  simpatici  to  the  American 
character,  and  many  of  their  national  traits  are  singu- 
larly like  our  own,  for  they  are  honest,  thrifty,  indus- 
trious, law-abiding,  and  good-natured.  The  Italians 
from  the  extreme  south  cf  the  peninsula  have  fewer 
of  these  qualities,  and  are  apt  to  be  ignorant,  lazy, 
destitute,  and  superstitious.  A  considerable  percent- 
age, especially  of  those  from  the  cities,  are  criminal. 
Even  for  a  long  time  after  landing  in  America,  the 
Calabrians  and  Sicilians  often  exhibit  a  lack  of  en- 

214 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       215 

lightenment  more  characteristic  of  the  Middle  Ages 
than  of  the  twentieth  century. 

At  home  they  have  lived  in  a  tumble-down  stone 
hut  about  fifteen  feet  square,  half  open  to  the  sky 
(its  only  saving  quality);  in  one  corner  the  entire 
family  sleeping  in  a  promiscuous  pile  on  a  bed  of 
leaves;  in  another  a  domestic  zoo  consisting  of  half 
a  dozen  hens,  a  cock,  a  goat,  and  a  donkey.  They 
neither  read,  think,  nor  exchange  ideas.  The  sight 
of  a  uniform  means  to  them  either  a  tax-gatherer,  a 
compulsory  enlistment  in  the  army,  or  an  arrest,  and 
at  its  appearance  the  man  will  run  and  the  wife  and 
children  turn  into  stone.  They  are  stubborn  and 
distrustful.  They  are  the  same  as  they  were  a  thou- 
sand or  more  years  gone  by. 

When  the  writer  was  acting  as  an  assistant  prose- 
cutor in  New  York  County,  a  young  Italian,  barely 
twenty  years  of  age,  was  brought  to  the  bar  charged 
with  assault  with  intent  to  kill.  The  complainant 
was  a  withered  Sicilian  woman  who  claimed  to  be 
his  wife.  Both  spoke  an  almost  unintelligible  dialect. 
The  case  on  its  face  was  simple  enough.  An  officer 
testified  that  on  a  Sunday  morning  in  Mulberry  Bend 
Park,  at  a  distance  of  about  fifty  feet  from  where  he 
was  standing,  he  saw  the  defendant,  who  had  been 
walking  peaceably  with  the  complaining  witness,  sud- 
denly draw  a  long  and  deadly  looking  knife  and  pro- 
ceed to  slash  her  about  the  head  and  arms.  It  had 
taken  the  officer  but  a  moment  or  two  to  seize  the 
defendant  from  behind  and  disarm  him,  but  in  the 
meantime  he  had  inflicted  some  eleven  wounds  upon 


216       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

her  body.  No  explanation  had  been  offered  for  this 
terrible  assault,  and  the  complainant  had  appeared 
involuntarily  before  the  Grand  Jury  and  afterward 
had  to  be  kept  in  the  House  of  Detention  as  a  hostile 
witness.  The  woman,  who  appeared  to  be  about 
fifty  years  old,  was  sworn,  and  on  being  questioned 
stated  that  she  had  been  married  to  the  defendant 
in  Sicily  three  years  before.  She  declined  to  admit 
that  he  had  attacked  or  harmed  her  in  any  way,  con- 
stantly mumbling:  "He  is  my  husband.  Do  not 
punish  him!" 

The  defendant,  however,  seemed  eager  to  get  on 
the  stand  and  to  tell  his  story;  nor  did  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  knife  in  evidence  or  the  exhibition  of  the 
woman's  wounds  embarrass  him  in  the  slightest  de- 
gree. His  manner  was  that  of  a  man  who  had  only 
to  explain  to  be  entirely  exonerated  from  blame.  He 
nodded  at  the  jury  and  the  judge,  and  scowled  at  the 
complainant,  who  was  speedily  conducted  to  a  place 
where  no  harm  could  possibly  come  to  her.  When 
at  last  he  was  sworn,  he  could  hardly  restrain  himself 
into  coherency. 

"Yes — that  woman  forced  me  to  marry  her!"  he 
testified  in  substance.  "But  in  the  eyes  of  God  I 
am  not  her  husband,  for  she  bewitched  me!  Else 
would  I  have  married  an  old  crone  who  could  not 
have  borne  me  children?  When  her  spells  weakened 
I  left  her  and  came  to  America.  Here  I  met  the 
woman  I  love, — Rosina, — and  as  I  had  been  be- 
witched into  the  other  marriage,  we  lived  together 
as  man  and  wife  for  two  years.  Then  one  day  a 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       217 

friend  told  me  that  the  old  woman  had  followed  me 
over  the  sea  and  was  going  to  throw  her  spells  upon 
me  again.  But  I  did  not  inform  Rosina  of  these 
things.  The  next  evening  she  told  me  that  an  old 
woman  had  been  to  the  house  and  asked  for  me.  For 
days  my  first  wife  lurked  in  the  neighborhood,  be- 
seeching me  to  come  back  to  her.  But  I  told  her  that 
in  the  eyes  of  God  she  was  not  my  wife.  Then,  in 
revenge,  she  cast  the  evil  eye  upon  the  child — sul 
bambino — and  for  six  weeks  it  ailed  and  then  died. 
Again  the  witch  asked  me  to  go  with  her,  and  again 
I  refused.  This  time  she  cast  her  evil  eye  upon  my 
wife — and  Rosina  grew  pale  and  sick  and  took  to  her 
bed.  There  was  only  one  thing  to  do,  you  under- 
stand. I  resolved  to  slay  her,  just  as  you — giudici — 
would  have  done.  I  bought  a  carving-knife  and 
sharpened  it,  and  asked  her  to  walk  with  me  to  the 
park,  and  I  would  have  killed  her  had  not  the  police 
prevented  me.  Wherefore,  0  giudici!  I  pray  you  to 
recall  her  and  permit  me  to  kill  her  or  to  decree  that 
she  be  hung!" 

This  case  illustrates  the  depths  of  ignorance  and 
superstition  that  are  occasionally  to  be  found  among 
Italian  peasant  immigrants.  Another  actual  ex- 
perience may  demonstrate  the  mediaeval  treachery  of 
which  the  Sicilian  Mafiuso  is  capable,  and  how  little 
his  manners  or  ideals  have  progressed  in  the  last 
five  hundred  years  or  so. 

A  photographer  and  his  wife,  both  from  Palermo, 
came  to  New  York  and  rented  a  comfortable  home 
with  which  was  connected  a  "studio."  In  the  course 


218       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

of  time  a  young  man — a  Mafiuso  from  Palermo — 
was  engaged  as  an  assistant,  and  promptly  fell  in 
love  with  the  photographer's  wife.  She  was  tired 
of  her  husband,  and  together  they  plotted  the  latter's 
murder.  After  various  plans  had  been  considered 
and  rejected,  they  determined  on  poison,  and  the 
assistant  procured  enough  cyanide  of  mercury  to  kill 
a  hundred  photographers,  and  turned  it  over  to  his 
mistress  to  administer  to  the  victim  in  his  "  Marsala." 
But  at  the  last  moment  her  hand  lost  its  courage 
and  she  weakly  sewed  the  poison  up  for  future  use 
inside  the  ticking  of  the  feather  bolster  on  the  marital 
bed. 

This  was  not  at  all  to  the  liking  of  her  lover,  who 
thereupon  took  matters  into  his  own  hands,  by  hiring 
another  Mafiuso  to  remove  the  photographer  with 
a  knife-thrust  through  the  heart.  In  order  that  the 
assassin  might  have  a  favorable  opportunity  to  effect 
his  object,  the  assistant,  who  posed  as  a  devoted 
friend  of  his  employer,  invited  the  couple  to  a 
Christmas  festival  at  his  own  apartment.  Here  they 
all  spent  an  animated  and  friendly  evening  together, 
drinking  toasts  and  singing  Christmas  carols,  and 
toward  midnight  the  party  broke  up  with  mutual 
protestations  of  regard.  If  the  writer  remembers 
accurately,  the  evidence  was  that  the  two  men  em- 
braced and  kissed  each  other.  After  a  series  of  fare- 
wells the  photographer  started  home.  It  was  a  clear 
moonlight  night  with  the  streets  covered  with  a  glis- 
tening fall  of  snow.  The  wife,  singing  a  song,  walked 
arm  in  arm  with  her  husband  until  they  came  to  a 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       219 

corner  where  a  jutting  wall  cast  a  deep  shadow  across 
the  sidewalk.  At  this  point  she  stepped  a  little  ahead 
of  him,  and  at  the  same  moment  the  hired  assassin 
slipped  up  behind  the  victim  and  drove  his  knife 
into  his  back.  The  wife  shrieked.  The  husband 
staggered  and  fell,  and  the  "bravo"  fled. 

The  police  arrived,  and  so  did  an  ambulance,  which 
removed  the  hysterical  wife  and  the  transfixed  vic- 
tim to  a  hospital.  Luckily  the  ambulance  surgeon 
did  not  remove  the  knife,  and  his  failure  to  do  so 
saved  the  life  of  the  photographer,  who  in  conse- 
quence practically  lost  no  blood  and  whose  cortex 
was  skilfully  hooked  up  by  a  dextrous  surgeon.  In 
a  month  he  was  out.  In  another  the  police  had  caught 
the  would-be  murderer  and  he  was  soon  convicted 
and  sentenced  to  State  prison,  under  a  contract  with 
the  assistant  to  be  paid  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
for  each  year  he  had  to  serve.  Evidently  the  lover 
and  his  mistress  concluded  that  the  photographer 
bore  a  charmed  life,  for  they  made  no  further  homi- 
cidal attempts. 

So  much  for  the  story  as  an  illustration  of  the  med- 
iaeval character  of  some  of  our  Sicilian  immigrants. 
For  the  satisfaction  of  the  reader's  taste  for  the  ro- 
mantic and  picturesque  it  should  be  added,  however, 
that  the  matter  did  not  end  here.  The  convict,  hav- 
ing served  several  years,  found  that  the  photogra- 
pher's assistant  was  not  keeping  his  part  of  the  con- 
tract, as  a  result  of  which  the  assassin's  wife  and  chil- 
dren were  suffering  for  lack  of  food  and  clothing. 
He  made  repeated  but  fruitless  attempts  to  compel 


220       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

the  party  of  the  first  part  to  pay  up,  and  finally,  in 
despair,  wrote  to  the  District  Attorney  of  New  York 
County  that  he  could,  if  he  would,  a  tale  unfold  that 
would  harrow  up  almost  anybody's  soul.  Mr.  Jerome 
therefore,  on  the  gamble  of  getting  something  worth 
while,  sent  Detective  Russo  to  Auburn  to  interview 
the  prisoner.  That  is  how  the  whole  story  came  to 
be  known.  The  case  was  put  in  the  writer's  hands, 
and  an  indictment  for  the  very  unusual  crime  of  at- 
tempted murder  (there  are  only  one  or  two  such 
cases  on  record  in  New  York  State)  was  speedily 
found  against  the  photographer's  assistant.  At  the 
trial  the  lover  saw  his  mistress  compelled  to  turn 
State's  evidence  against  him  to  save  herself.  She 
testified  to  the  Christmas  carols  and  the  cyanide  of 
mercury. 

"Did  you  ever  remove  this  terrible  poison  from 
the  bolster?"  demanded  the  defendant's  counsel  in 
a  sneering  tone. 

"No,"  answered  the  woman. 

"Have  you  ever  changed  the  bolster?"  he  per- 
sisted. 

"No." 

"Then  it's  there  yet?" 

"I— I  think  so,"  falteringly. 

"I  demand  that  this  incredible  yarn  be  investi- 
gated ! "  cried  the  lawyer.  "  I  ask  that  the  court  send 
for  the  bolster  and  cut  it  open  here  in  the  presence  of 
the  jury." 

The  writer  had  no  choice  but  to  accede  to  this  re- 
quest, and  the  bolster  was  hunted  down  and  brought 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       221 

into  court.  With  some  anxiety  both  sides  watched 
while  the  lining  was  slit  with  a  penknife.  A  few 
feathers  fluttered  to  the  floor  as  the  fingers  of  the  wit- 
ness felt  inside  and  came  in  contact  with  the  poison. 
The  assistant  was  convicted  of  attempted  murder  on 
the  convict's  testimony,  and  sentenced  to  Sing  Sing 
for  twenty-five  years.  That  was  the  end  of  the  sec- 
ond lesson. 

About  a  month  afterward  the  defendant's  counsel 
made  a  motion  for  a  new  trial  on  the  ground  that  the 
convict  now  admitted  his  testimony  to  have  been 
wholly  false,  and  produced  an  affidavit  from  the  as- 
sassin to  that  effect.  Naturally  so  startling  an  alle- 
gation demanded  investigation.  Yes,  insisted  the 
"bravo,"  it  was  all  made  up,  a  "camorra" — not  a 
word  of  truth  in  it,  and  he  had  invented  the  whole 
thing  in  order  to  get  a  vacation  from  State  prison 
and  a  free  ride  to  New  York.  However,  the  court 
denied  the  motion.  The  writer  procured  a  new  in- 
dictment against  the  assassin — this  time  for  perjury 
— and  he  was  sentenced  to  another  additional  term 
in  prison.  What  induced  this  sudden  and  extraor- 
dinary change  of  mind  on  his  part  can  only  be  sur- 
mised. 

These  two  cases  are  extreme  examples  of  the  med- 
isevalism  that  to  a  considerable  degree  prevails  in 
New  York  City,  probably  in  Chicago  and  Boston, 
and  wherever  there  is  an  excessive  south  Italian 
population. 

The  conditions  under  which  a  large  number  of 
Italians  live  in  this  country  are  favorable  not  only 


222       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

to  the  continuance  of  ignorance,  but  to  the  develop- 
ment of  disease  and  crime.  Naples  is  bad  enough, 
no  doubt.  The  people  there  are  poverty-stricken 
and  homeless.  But  in  New  York  City  they  are  worse 
than  homeless.  It  is  better  far  to  sleep  under  the 
stars  than  in  a  stuffy  room  with  ten  or  twelve  other 
persons.  Let  the  reader  climb  the  stairs  of  some  of 
the  tenements  in  Elizabeth  Street,  or  go  through 
those  in  Union  Street,  Brooklyn,  and  he  will  get  first- 
hand evidence.  This  is  generally  true  of  the  lower 
class  of  Italians  throughout  the  United  States, 
whether  in  the  city  or  country.  They  live  under 
worse  conditions  than  at  home.  You  may  go  through 
the  railroad  camps  and  see  twenty  men  sleeping  to- 
gether in  a  one-room  hut  of  lath,  tar-paper,  and 
clay.  The  writer  knows  of  one  Italian  laborer  in 
Massachusetts  who  slept  in  a  floorless  mud  hovel 
about  six  feet  square,  with  one  hole  to  go  in  and  out 
by  and  another  in  the  roof  for  ventilation — in  order 
to  save  $1.75  per  month.  All  honor  to  him!  Gari- 
baldi was  of  just  such  stuff,  only  he  suffered  in  a  bet- 
ter cause.  In  Naples  the  young  folks  are  out  all  day 
in  the  sun.  Here  they  are  indoors  all  the  year 
round.  For  the  consequences  of  this  change  see  Dr. 
Peccorini's  article  in  the  Forum  for  January,  1911, 
on  the  tuberculosis  that  soon  develops  among  Italians 
who  abroad  were  accustomed  to  live  in  the  country 
but  here  are  forced  to  exist  in  tenements. 

Now,  for  historic  reasons,  these  south  Italians 
hate  and  distrust  all  governmental  control  and  de- 
spise any  appeal  to  the  ordinary  tribunals  of  justice 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       223 

to  assert  a  right  or  to  remedy  a  wrong.  It  has  been 
justly  said  by  a  celebrated  Italian  writer  that,  in 
effect,  there  is  some  instinct  for  civil  war  in  the  heart 
of  every  Italian.  The  insufferable  tyranny  of  the 
Bourbon  dynasty  made  every  outlaw  dear  to  the 
hearts  of  the  oppressed  people  of  the  Kingdom  of  the 
Two  Sicilies.  Even  if  he  robbed  them,  they  felt  that 
he  was  the  lesser  of  two  evils,  and  sheltered  him 
from  the  authorities.  Out  of  this  feeling  grew  the 
"Omerta,"  which  paralyzes  the  arm  of  justice  both 
in  Naples  and  Sicily.  The  late  Marion  Crawford 
thus  summed  up  the  Sicilian  code  of  honor: 

According  to  this  code,  a  man  who  appeals  to  the  law 
against  his  fellow  man  is  not  only  a  fool  but  a  coward,  and  he 
who  cannot  take  care  of  himself  without  the  protection  of  the 
police  is  both.  ...  It  is  reckoned  as  cowardly  to  betray  an 
offender  to  justice,  even  though  the  offence  be  against  one's 
self,  as  it  would  be  not  to  avenge  an  injury  by  violence.  It 
is  regarded  as  dastardly  and  contemptible  in  a  wounded  man 
to  betray  the  name  of  his  assailant,  because  if  he  recovers  he 
must  naturally  expect  to  take  vengeance  himself.  A  rhymed 
Sicilian  proverb  sums  up  this  principle,  the  supposed  speaker 
being  one  who  has  been  stabbed.  "  If  I  live,  I  will  kill  thee," 
it  says;  "if  I  die,  I  forgive  thee!" 

Any  one  who  has  had  anything  to  do  with  the  ad- 
ministration of  criminal  justice  in  a  city  with  a  large 
Italian  population  must  have  found  himself  con- 
stantly hampered  by  precisely  this  same  "Omerta." 
The  south  Italian  feels  obliged  to  conceal  the  name 
of  the  assassin  and  very  likely  his  person,  though  he 
himself  be  but  an  accidental  witness  of  the  crime; 
and,  while  the  writer  knows  of  no  instance  in  New 


224       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

York  City  where  an  innocent  man  has  gone  to  prison 
himself  rather  than  betray  a  criminal,  Signer  Cutera, 
formerly  chief  of  police  in  Palermo,  states  that  there 
have  been  many  cases  in  Sicily  where  men  have  suf- 
fered long  terms  of  penal  servitude  and  even  have 
died  in  prison  rather  than  give  information  to  the 
police. 

In  point  of  fact,  however,  the  "Omerta"  is  not 
confined  to  Italians.  It  is  a  common  attribute  of  all 
who  are  opposed  to  authority  of  any  kind,  including 
small  boys  and  criminals,  and  with  the  latter  arises 
no  more  from  a  half  chivalrous  loyalty  to  their  fellows 
than  it  does  from  hatred  of  the  police  and  a  uniform 
desire  to  block  their  efforts  (even  if  a  personal  adver- 
sary should  go  unpunished  in  consequence),  fear  that 
complaint  made  or  assistance  given  to  the  authorities 
will  result  in  vengeance  being  taken  upon  the  com- 
plainant by  some  comrade  or  relative  of  the  accused, 
distrust  of  the  ability  of  the  police  to  do  anything 
anyway,  disgust  at  the  delay  involved,  and  lastly, 
if  not  chiefly,  the  realization  that  as  a  witness  in  a 
court  of  justice  the  informer  as  a  professional  crim- 
inal would  have  little  or  no  standing  or  credence,  and 
in  addition  would,  under  cross-examination,  be  com- 
pelled to  lay  bare  the  secrets  of  his  unsavory  past, 
perhaps  resulting  indirectly  in  a  term  in  prison  for 
himself.*  Thus  may  be  accounted  for  much  of  the 
supposed  "romantic,  if  misguided,  chivalry"  of  the 
south  Italian.  It  is  common  both  to  him  and  to  the 
Bowery  tough.  The  writer  knew  personally  a  pro- 

*  Much  more  likely  in  Italy  than  in  the  United  States. 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       225 

fessional  crook  who  was  twice  almost  shot  to  pieces 
in  Chatham  Square,  New  York  City,  and  who  per- 
sistently declined,  even  on  his  dying  bed,  to  give  a 
hint  of  the  identity  of  his  assassins,  announcing  that 
if  he  got  well  he  "would  attend  to  that  little  matter 
himself."  Much  of  the  romance  surrounding  crime 
and  criminals,  on  examination,  "fades  into  the  light 
of  common  day" — the  obvious  product  not  of  ideal- 
ism, but  of  well-calculated  self-interest. 

As  illustrating  the  backwardness  of  our  Italian 
fellow-citizens  in  coming  forward  when  the  crim- 
inality of  one  of  their  countrymen  is  at  stake,  the 
last  three  cases  of  kidnapping  in  New  York  City 
may  be  mentioned. 

About  a  year  and  a  half  ago  the  little  boy  of  Dr. 
Scimeca,  of  2  Prince  Street,  New  York,  was  taken 
from  his  home.  From  outside  sources  the  police 
heard  that  the  child  had  been  stolen,  but,  although 
he  was  receiving  constant  letters  and  telephonic  com- 
munications from  the  kidnappers,  Dr.  Scimeca  would 
not  give  them  any  information.  It  is  known  on 
pretty  good  authority  that  the  sum  of  $10,000  was 
at  first  demanded  as  a  ransom,  and  was  lowered  by 
degrees  to  $5,000,  $2,500,  and  finally  to  $1,700.  Dr. 
Scimeca  at  last  made  terms  with  the  kidnappers, 
and  was  told  to  go  one  evening  to  City  Park,  where 
he  is  said  to  have  handed  $1,700  to  a  stranger.  The 
child  was  found  wandering  aimlessly  in  the  streets 
next  day,  after  a  detention  of  nearly  three  months. 

The  second  case  was  that  of  Vincenzo  Sabello,  a 
grocer  of  386  Broome  Street,  who  lost  his  little  boy 


226       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

on  August  26,  1911.  After  thirty  days  he  reported 
the  matter  to  the  police,  but  shortly  after  tried  to 
throw  them  off  the  track  by  saying  that  he  had  been 
mistaken,  that  the  boy  had  not  been  kidnapped,  and 
that  he  wished  no  assistance.  Finally  he  ordered 
the  detectives  out  of  his  place.  About  a  month  later 
the  child  was  recovered,  but  not,  according  to  reliable 
information,  until  Mr.  Sabello  had  handed  over 
$2,500. 

Pending  the  recovery  of  the  Sabello  boy,  a  third 
child  was  stolen  from  the  top  floor  of  a  house  at  119 
Elizabeth  Street.  The  father,  Leonardo  Quartiano, 
reported  the  disappearance,  and  in  answer  to  ques- 
tions stated  that  he  had  received  no  letters  or  tele- 
phone messages.  "  Why  should  I?  "  he  inquired,  with 
uplifted  hands  and  the  most  guileless  demeanor.  "I 
am  poor!  I  am  a  humble  fishmonger."  In  point  of 
fact,  Quartiano  at  the  time  had  a  pocketful  of  black- 
mail letters,  and  after  four  weeks  paid  a  good  ransom 
and  got  back  his  boy. 

It  is  impossible  to  estimate  correctly  the  number 
of  Italian  criminals  in  America  or  their  influence 
upon  our  police  statistics;  but  in  several  classes  of 
crime  the  Italians  furnish  from  fifteen  to  fifty  per 
cent  of  those  convicted.  In  murder,  assault  with  in- 
tent to  kill,  blackmail,  and  extortion  they  head  the 
list,  as  well  as  in  certain  other  offences  unnecessary 
to  describe  more  fully  but  prevalent  in  Naples  and 
the  South. 

Joseph  Petrosino,  the  able  and  fearless  officer  of 
New  York  police  who  was  murdered  in  Palermo  v 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       227 

while  in  the  service  of  the  country  of  his  adoption, 
was,  while  he  lived,  our  greatest  guaranty  of  protec- 
tion against  the  Italian  criminal.  But  Petrosino  is 
gone.  The  fear  of  him  no  longer  will  deter  Italian 
ex-convicts  from  seeking  asylum  in  the  United  States. 
He  once  told  the  writer  that  there  were  five  thousand 
Italian  ex-convicts  in  New  York  City  alone,  of  whom 
he  knew  a  large  proportion  by  sight  and  name.*  Sig- 
nor  Ferrero,  the  noted  historian,  is  reported  to  have 
stated,  on  his  recent  visit  to  America,  that  there  were 
thirty  thousand  Italian  criminals  in  New  York  City. 
Whatever  their  actual  number,  there  are  quite 
enough  at  all  events. 

By  far  the  greater  portion  of  these  criminals, 
whether  ex-convicts  or  novices,  are  the  products  or 
by-products  of  the  influence  of  the  two  great  secret 
societies  of  southern  Italy.  These  societies  and  the 
unorganized  criminal  propensity  and  atmosphere 
which  they  generate,  are  known  as  the  "Mala 
Vita." 

The  Mafia,  a  purely  Sicilian  product,  exerts  a  much 
more  obvious  influence  in  America  than  the  Camorra, 
since  the  Mafia  is  powerful  all  over  Sicily,  while  the 
Camorra  is  practically  confined  to  the  city  of  Naples 
and  its  environs.  The  Sicilians  in  America  vastly 
outnumber  the  Neapolitans.  Thus  in  New  York 
City  for  every  one  Camorrist  you  will  find  seven 
or  eight  Mafiusi.  But  they  are  all  essentially  of  a 

*  Petrosino  is  a  national  hero  in  Italy,  where  he  was  known  as 
"  II  Sherlock  Holmes  d'ltalia  "—"the  Italian  Sherlock  Holmes." 
Many  novels  in  which  he  figures  as  the  central  character  have  a 
wide  circulation  there. 


228       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

piece,  and  the  artificial  distinction  between  them  in 
Italy  disappears  entirely  in  America. 

Historically  the  Mafia  burst  from  a  soil  fertilized 
by  the  blood  of  martyred  patriots,  and  represented 
the  revolt  of  the  people  against  all  forms  of  the  tyr- 
annous government  of  the  Bourbons;  but  the  fact 
remains  that,  whatever  its  origin,  the  Mafia  to-day 
is  a  criminal  organization,  having,  like  the  Camorra 
for  its  ultimate  object  blackmail  and  extortion.  Its 
lower  ranks  are  recruited  from  the  scum  of  Palermo, 
who,  combining  extraordinary  physical  courage  with 
the  lowest  type  of  viciousness,  generally  live  by  the 
same  means  that  supports  the  East  Side  "cadet" 
in  New  York  City/and  who  end  either  in  prison  or 
on  the  dissecting-table,  or  gradually  develop  into 
real  Mafiusi  and  perhaps  gain  some  influence. 

It  is,  in  addition,  an  ultra-successful  criminal  po- 
litical machine,  which,  under  cover  of  a  pseudo-prin- 
ciple, deals  in  petty  crime,  wholesale  blackmail,  po- 
litical jobbery,  and  the  sale  of  elections,  and  may 
fairly  be  compared  to  the  lowest  types  of  politico- 
criminal  clubs  or  societies  in  New  York  City.  In 
Palmero  it  is  made  up  of  "gangs"  of  toughs  and  crim- 
inals, not  unlike  the  Camorrist  gangs  of  Naples,  but 
without  their  organization,  and  is  kept  together  by 
personal  allegiance  to  some  leader.  Such  a  leader  is 
almost  always  under  the  patronage  of  a  "boss"  in 
New  York  or  a  padrone  in  Italy,  who  uses  his  influence 
to  protect  the  members  of  the  gang  when  in  legal  diffi- 
culties and  find  them  jobs  when  out  of  work  and  in 
need  of  funds.  Thus  the  "boss"  can  rely  on  the 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       229 

gang's  assistance  in  elections  in  return  for  favors  at 
other  times.  Such  gangs  may  act  in  harmony  or  be 
in  open  hostility  or  conflict  with  one  another,  but  all 
are  united  as  against  the  police,  and  exhibit  much 
the  same  sort  of  "Omerta"  in  Chatham  Square  as 
in  Palermo.  The  difference  between  the  Mafia  and 
Camorra  and  the  " gangs"  of  New  York  City  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  latter  are  so  much  less  numerous 
and  powerful,  and  bribery  and  corruption  so  much 
less  prevalent,  that  they  can  exert  no  practical  in- 
fluence in  politics  outside  the  Board  of  Aldermen, 
whereas  the  Italian  societies  of  the  Mala  Vita  exert 
an  influence  everywhere — in  the  Chamber  of  Depu- 
ties, the  Cabinet,  and  even  closer  to  the  King.  In 
fact,  political  corruption  has  been  and  still  is  of  a 
character  in  Italy  luckily  unknown  in  America — not 
in  the  amounts  of  money  paid  over  (which  are  large 
enough),  but  in  the  calm  and  matter-of-fact  attitude 
adopted  toward  the  subject  in  Parliament  and  else- 
where. 

The  overwhelming  majority  of  Italian  criminals 
in  this  country  come  from  Sicily,  Calabria,  Naples, 
and  its  environs.  They  have  lived,  most  of  their 
lives,  upon  the  ignorance,  fear,  and  superstitions  of 
their  fellow-countrymen.  They  know  that  so  long 
as  they  confine  their  criminal  operations  to  Italians 
of  the  lower  class  they  need  have  little  terror  of  the 
law,  since,  if  need  be,  their  victims  will  harbor  them 
from  the  police  and  perjure  themselves  in  their  de- 
fence. For  the  ignorant  Italian  brings  to  this  coun-  / 
try  with  him  the  same  attitude  toward  government 


230       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

and  the  same  distrust  of  the  law  that  characterized 
him  and  his  fellow-townsmen  at  home,  the  same 
Omerta  that  makes  it  so  difficult  to  convict  any  Ital- 
ian of  a  serious  offence.  The  Italian  crook  is  quick- 
witted and  soon  grasps  the  legal  situation.  He  finds 
his  fellow  countrymen  prospering,  for  they  are  gen- 
erally a  hard-working  and  thrifty  lot,  and  he  pro- 
ceeds to  levy  tribute  on  them  just  as  he  did  in  Naples 
or  Palermo.  If  they  refuse  his  demands,  stabbing 
or  bomb-throwing  show  that  he  has  lost  none  of  his 
ferocity.  Where  they  are  of  the  most  ignorant  type 
he  threatens  them  with  the  "evil  eye,"  the  "  curse 
of  God,"  or  even  with  sorceries.  The  number  of 
Italians  who  can  be  thus  terrorized  is  astonishing. 
Of  course,  the  mere  possibility  of  such  things  argues 
a  state  of  medievalism.  But  mere  medievalism 
would  be  comparatively  unimportant  did  it  not  sup- 
ply the  principal  element  favorable  to  the  growth 
of  the  Mala  Vita,  apprehended  with  so  'much  dread 
by  many  of  the  citizens  of  the  United  States. 

Now,  what  are  the  phases  of  the  Mala  Vita — the 
Camorra,  the  Black  Hand,  the  Mafia — which  are 
to-day  observable  in  the  United  States  and  which 
may  reasonably  be  anticipated  in  the  future? 

In  the  first  place,  it  may  be  safely  said  that  of  the 
Camorra  in  its  historic  sense — the  Camorra  of  the 
ritual,  of  the  "Capo  in  Testa"  and  "Capo  in  Trino," 
highly  organized  with  a  self-perpetuating  body  of 
officers  acting  under  a  supreme  head — there  is  no 
trace.  Indeed,  as  has  already  been  explained,  this 
phase  of  the  Camorra,  save  in  the  prisons,  is  prac- 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       231 

tically  over,  even  in  Naples.    But  of  the  Mala  Vita 
there  is  evidence  enough. 

Every  large  city,  where  people  exist  under  unwhole- 
some conditions,  has  some  such  phenomenon.  In 
Palermo  we  have  the  traditional  Mafia — a  state  of  >- 
mind,  if  you  will,  ineradicable  and  all-pervasive. 
Naples  festers  with  the  Camorra  as  with  a  venereal 
disease,  its  whole  body  politic  infected  with  it,  so 
that  its  very  breath  is  foul  and  its  moral  eyesight 
astigmatized.  In  Paris  we  find  the  Apache,  abortive 
offspring  of  prostitution  and  brutality,  the  twin 
brother  of  the  Camorrista.  In  New  York  there  are 
the  "gangs,"  composed  of  pimps,  thugs,  cheap 
thieves,  and  hangers-on  of  criminals,  which  rise  and 
wane  in  power  according  to  the  honesty  and  effi- 
ciency of  the  police,  and  who,  from  time  to  time,  hold 
much  the  same  relations  to  police  captains  and  in- 
spectors as  the  various  gangs  of  the  Neapolitan  Ca- 
morra do  to  commissaries  and  delegati  of  the  "Pub- 
lic Safety."  Corresponding  to  these,  we  have  the 
"Black  Hand"  gangs  among  the  Italian  population 
of  our  largest  cities.  Sometimes  the  two  coalesce, 
so  that  in  the  second  generation  we  occasionally  find 
&n  Italian,  like  Paul  Kelly,  leading  a  gang  composed 
of  other  Italians,  Irish- Americans,  and  "tough  guys" 
of  all  nationalities.  But  the  genuine  Black  Hander 
(the  real  Camorrist  or  "Mafiuoso")  works  alone  or 
with  two  or  three  of  his  fellow-countrymen. 

Curiously  enough,  there  is  a  society  of  criminal 
young  men  in  New  York  City  who  are  almost  the 
exact  counterpart  of  the  Apaches  of  Paris.  They  are 


232       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

known  by  the  euphonious  name  of  "Waps"  or 
"Jacks."  These  are  young  Italian-Americans  who 
allow  themselves  to  be  supported  by  one  or  two 
women,  almost  never  of  their  own  race.  These  pimps 
affect  a  peculiar  cut  of  hair,  and  dress  with  half- 
turned-up  velvet  collar,  not  unlike  the  old-time  Ca- 
morrist,  and  have  manners  and  customs  of  their 
own.  They  frequent  the  lowest  order  of  dance-halls, 
and  are  easily  known  by  their  picturesque  styles  of 
dancing,  of  which  the  most  popular  is  yclept  the 
"Nigger."  They  form  one  variety  of  the  many 
"gangs"  that  infest  the  city,  are  as  quick  to  flash  a 
knife  as  the  Apaches,  and,  as  a  cult  by  themselves, 
form  an  interesting  sociological  study. 

The  majority  of  the  followers  of  the  Mala  Vita — 
the  Black  Handers — are  not  actually  of  Italian  birth, 
but  belong  to  the  second  generation.  As  children 
they  avoid  school,  later  haunt  "pool"  parlors  and 
saloons,  and  soon  become  infected  with  a  desire  for 
"easy  money,"  which  makes  them  glad  to  follow  the 
lead  of  some  experienced  capo  maestra.  To  them  he 
is  a  sort  of  demi-god,  and  they  readily  become  his 
clients  in  crime,  taking  their  wages  in  experience  or 
whatever  part  of  the  proceeds  he  doles  out  to  them. 
Usually  the  "boss"  tells  them  nothing  of  the  inner 
workings  of  his  plots.  They  are  merely  instructed  to 
deliver  a  letter  or  to  blow  up  a  tenement.  The  same 
name  is  used  by  the  Black  Hander  to-day  for  his 
"assistant"  or  "apprentice"  who  actually  commits 
a  crime  as  that  by  which  he  was  known  under  the 
Bourbons  in  1820.  In  those  early  days  the  second- 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       233 

grade\member  of  the  Camorra  was  known  as  a  pic- 
ciotto.  To-day  the  apprentice  or  "helper"  of  the 
Black  Hander  is  termed  a  piccioW  in  the  clipped  dia- 
lect of  the  South.  But  the  picciotto  of  New  York  is 
never  raised  to  the  grade  of  Camorrista,  since  the 
organization  of  the  Camorra  has  never  been  trans- 
ferred to  this  country.  Instead  he  becomes  in  course 
of  time  a  sort  of  bully  or  bad  man  on  his  own  hook,  a 
criminal  "swell/'  who  does  no  manual  labor,  rarely 
commits  a  crime  with  his  own  hands,  and  lives  by 
his  brain.  Such  a  one  was  Micelli  Palliozzi,  arrested 
for  the  kidnapping  of  the  Scimeco  and  Sabello  chil- 
dren mentioned  above — a  dandy  who  did  nothing 
but  swagger  around  the  Italian  quarter. 

Generally  each  capo  maestra  works  for  himself  with 
his  own  handful  of  followers,  who  may  or  may  not 
enjoy  his  confidence,  and  each  gang  has  its  own  terri- 
tory, held  sacred  by  the  others.  The  leaders  all 
know  each  other,  but  never  trespass  upon  the  others' 
preserves,  and  rarely  attempt  to  blackmail  or  terror- 
ize any  one  but  Italians.  They  gather  around  them 
associates  from  their  own  part  of  Italy,  or  the  sons  of 
men  whom  they  have  known  at  home.  Thus  for  a 
long  time  Costabili  was  leader  of  the  Calabrian  Ca- 
morra in  New  York,  and  held  undisputed  sway  of 
the  territory  south  of  Houston  Street  as  far  as  Canal 
Street  and  from  Broadway  to  the  East  River.  On 
September  15,  last,  Costabili  was  caught  with  a  bomb 
in  his  hand,  and  he  is  now  doing  a  three-year  bit  up 
the  river.  Sic  transit  gloria  mundi! 

The  Italian  criminal  and  his  American  offspring 


234       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

have  a  sincere  contempt  for  American  criminal  law. 
They  are  used  by  experience  or  tradition  to  arbitrary 
police  methods  and  prosecutions  unhampered  by 
Anglo-Saxon  rules  of  evidence.  When  the  Italian 
•  crook  is  actually  brought  to  the  bar  of  justice  at  home, 
that  he  will  "go"  is  generally  a  foregone  conclusion. 
There  need  be  no  complainant  in  Italy.  The  govern- 
ment is  the  whole  thing  there.  But,  in  America,  if 
the  criminal  can  "reach"  the  complaining  witness 
or  "call  him  off"  he  has  nothing  to  worry  about. 
This  he  knows  he  can  easily  do  through  the  terror  of 
the  Camorra.  And  thus  he  knows  that  the  chances 
he  takes  are  comparatively  small,  including  that  of 
conviction  if  he  is  ever  tried  by  a  jury  of  his  American 
peers,  who  are  loath  to  find  a  man  guilty  whose  lan- 
guage and  motives  they  are  unable  to  understand. 
All  this  the  young  Camorrist  is  perfectly  aware  of 
and  gambles  on. 

One  of  the  unique  phenomena  of  the  Mala  Vita 
in  America  is  the  class  of  Italians  who  are  known  as 
" men  of  honor."  These  are  native  Italians  who  have 
been  convicted  of  crime  in  their  own  country  and 
have  either  made  their  escape  or  served  their  terms. 
Some  of  these  may  have  been  counterfeiters  at  home. 
They  come  to  America  either  as  stokers,  sailors,  stew- 
ards, or  stowaways,  and,  while  they  can  not  get  pass- 
ports, it  is  surprising  how  lax  the  authorities  are  in 
permitting  their  escape.  The  spirit  of  the  Italian 
law  is  willing  enough,  but  its  fleshly  enforcement  is 
curiously  weak.  Those  who  have  money  enough 
manage  to  reach  France  or  Holland  and  come  over 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       235 

first  or  second-class.  The  main  fact  is  that  they  get 
here — law  or  no  law.  Once  they  arrive  in  America, 
they  realize  their  opportunities  and  actually  start  in 
to  turn  over  a  new  leaf.  They  work  hard;  they 
become  honest.  They  may  have  been  Camorrists  or 
Mafiusi  at  home,  but  they  are  so  no  longer.  They 
are  "on  the  level/7  and  stay  so;  only — they  are  "men 
of  honor."  And  what  is  the  meaning  of  that?  Simply 
that  they  keep  their  mouths,  eyes,  and  ears  shut  so 
far  as  the  Mala  Vita  is  concerned.  They  are  not 
against  it.  They  might  even  assist  it  passively. 
Many  of  these  erstwhile  criminals  pay  through  the 
nose  for  respectability — the  Camorrist  after  his 
kind,  the  Mafius7  after  his  kind.  Sometimes  the 
banker  who  is  paying  to  a  Camorrist  is  blackmailed 
by  a  Mafius7.  He  straightway  complains  to  his 
own  bad  man,  who  goes  to  the  "butter-in77  and  says 
in  effect:  "Here!  What  are  you  doing?  Don't  you 
know  So-and-So  is  under  my  protection?77 

"Oh!77  answers  the  Mafius7.  "Is  he?  Well,  if 
that  is  so,  I'll  leave  him  alone — as  long  as  he  is  pay- 
ing for  protection  by  somebody." 

The  reader  will  observe  how  the  silence  of  "the 
man  of  honor77  is  not  remotely  associated  with  the 
Omerta.  As  a  rule,  however,  the  "men  of  honor77 
form  a  privileged  and  negatively  righteous  class,  and 
are  let  strictly  alone  by  virtue  of  their  evil  past. 

The  number  of  south  Italians  who  now  occupy 
positions  of  respectability  in  New  York  and  who  have 
criminal  records  on  the  other  side  would  astound  even 
their  compatriots.  Even  several  well-known  busi- 


236       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

ness  men,  bankers,  journalists,  and  others  have  been 
convicted  of  something  or  other  in  Italy.  Occasion- 
ally they  have  been  sent  to  jail;  more  often  they  have 
been  convicted  in  their  absence — condannati  in  con- 
tumacia — and  dare  not  return  to  their  native  land. 
Sometimes  the  offences  have  been  serious,  others  have 
been  merely  technical.  At  least  one  popular  Italian 
banker  in  New  York  has  been  convicted  of  murder — 
but  the.matter  was  arranged  at  home  so  that  he  treats 
it  in  a  humourous  vein.  Two  other  bankers  are 
fugitives  from  justice,  and  at  least  one  editor. 

To-day  most  of  these  men  are  really  respectable 
citizens.  Of  course  some  of  them  are  a  bad  lot,  but 
they  are  known  and  avoided.  Yet  the  fact  that 
even  the  better  class  of  Italians  in  New  York  are 
thoroughly  familiar  with  the  phenomena  surround- 
ing the  Mala  Vita  is  favorable  to  the  spread  of  a 
certain  amount  of  Camorrist  activity.  There  are  a 
number  of  influential  bosses,  or  capi  maestra,  who 
are  ready  to  undertake  almost  any  kind  of  a  job  for 
from  twenty  dollars  up,  or  on  a  percentage.  Here  is 
an  illustration. 

A  well-known  Italian  importer  in  New  York  City 
was  owed  the  sum  of  three  thousand  dollars  by  an- 
other Italian,  to  whom  he  had  loaned  the  money 
without  security  and  who  had  abused  his  confidence. 
Finding  that  the  debtor  intended  to  cheat  him  out 
of  the  money,  although  he  could  easily  have  raised 
the  amount  of  the  debt  had  he  so  wished,  the  im- 
porter sent  for  a  Camorrist  and  told  him  the  story. 

"You  shall  be  paid,"  said  the  Camorrist. 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       237 

Two  weeks  later  the  importer  was  summoned  to  a 
cellar  on  Mott  Street.  The  Camorrist  conducted 
him  down  the  stairs  and  opened  the  door.  A  candle- 
end  flaring  on  a  barrel  showed  the  room  crowded 
with  rough-looking  Italians  and  the  debtor  crouch- 
ing in  a  corner.  The  Camorrist  motioned  to  the 
terrified  victim  to  seat  himself  by  the  barrel.  No 
word  was  spoken  and  amid  deathly  silence  the  man 
obeyed.  At  last  the  Camorrist  turned  to  the  im- 
porter and  said : 

"This  man  owes  you  three  thousand  dollars,  I 
believe." 

The  importer  nodded. 

"Pay  what  you  justly  owe,"  ordered  the  Camor- 
rist. 

Slowly  the  reluctant  debtor  produced  a  roll  of 
bills  and  counted  them  out  upon  the  barrel-head.  At 
five  hundred  he  stopped  and  looked  at  the  Camor- 
rist. 

aGo  on!"  directed  the  latter. 

So  the  other,  with  beads  of  sweat  on  his  brow,  con- 
tinued until  he  reached  the  two  thousand-dollar 
mark.  Here  the  bills  seemed  exhausted.  The  im- 
porter by  this  time  began  to  feel  a  certain  reticence 
about  his  part  in  the  matter — there  might  be  some 
widows  and  orphans  somewhere.  The  '.bad  man 
looked  inquiringly  at  him,  and  the  importer  mum- 
bled something  to  the  effect  that  he  "would  let  it 
go  at  that."  But  the  bad  man  misunderstood  what 
his  client  had  said  and  ordered  the  bankrupt  to  pro- 
ceed. So  he  did  proceed  to  pull  out  another  thou- 


238       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

sand  dollars  from  an  inside  pocket  and  add  it  to  the 
pile  on  the  barrel-head.  The  Camorrist  nodded, 
picked  up  the  money,  recounted  it,  and  removed 
three  hundred  dollars,  handing  the  rest  to  the  im- 
porter. 

"I  have  deducted  the  camorra"  said  he. 

The  bravos  formed  a  line  along  the  cellar  to  the 
door,  and,  as  the  importer  passed  on  his  way  out, 
each  removed  his  hat  and  wished  him  a  buona  sera. 
That  importer  certainly  will  never  contribute  toward 
a  society  for  the  purpose  of  eradicating  the  "Black 
Hand  "  from  the  city  of  New  York.  He  says  it  is  the 
greatest  thing  he  knows. 

But  the  genuine  Camorrist  or  Mafius'  would  be 
highly  indignant  at  being  called  a  "Black  Hander." 
His  is  an  ancient  and  honorable  profession;  he  is  no 
common  criminal,  but  a  "man  peculiarly  sensitive  in 
matters  of  honor,"  who  for  a  consideration  will  see 
that  others  keep  their  honorable  agreements. 

The  writer  has  received  authoritative  reports  of 
three  instances  of  extortion  which  are  probably  pro- 
totypes of  many  other  varieties.  The  first  is  inter- 
esting because  it  shows  a  Mafius'  plying  his  regular 
business  and  coming  here  for  that  precise  purpose. 
There  is  a  large  wholesale  lemon  trade  in  New^York 
City,  and  various  growers  in  Italy  compete  for  it. 
Not  long  past,  a  well-dressed  Italian  of  good  appear- 
ance and  address  rented  an  office  in  the  World  Build- 
ing. His  name  on  the  door  bore  the  suffix  "Agent." 
He  was,  indeed,  a  most  effective  one,  and  he  secured 
practically  all  the  lemon  business  among  the  Italians 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       239 

for  his  principals,  for  he  was  a  famous  capo  mafia, 
and  his  customers  knew  that  if  they  did  not  buy  from 
the  growers  under  his  "  protection "  that  something 
might,  and  very  probably  would,  happen  to  their 
families  in  or  near  Palermo.  At  any  rate,  few  of  them 
took  any  chances  in  the  matter,  and  his  trip  to  Amer- 
ica was  a  financial  success. 

In  much  the  same  way  a  notorious  crook  named 
Lupo  forced  all  the  retail  Italian  grocers  to  buy  from 
him,  although  his  prices  were  considerably  higher 
than  those  of  his  competitors. 

Even  Americans  have  not  been  slow  to  avail  them- 
selves of  Camorrist  methods.  There  is  a  sewing- 
machine  company  which  sells  its  machines  to  Italian 
families  on  the  instalment  plan.  A  regular  agent  so- 
licits the  orders,  places  the  machines,  and  collects 
the  initial  dollar;  but  the  moment  a  subscriber  in 
Mulberry  Street  falls  in  arrears  his  or  her  name  is 
placed  on  a  black  list,  which  is  turned  over  by  this 
enterprising  business  house  to  a  "collector,"  who  is 
none  other  than  the  leading  Camorrist,  "bad  man," 
or  Black  Hander  of  the  neighborhood.  A  knock  on 
the  door  from  his  fist,  followed  by  the  connotative 
expression  on  his  face,  results  almost  uniformly  in 
immediate  payment  of  all  that  is  due.  Needless  to 
say,  he  gets  his  camorra — a  good  one — on  the  money 
that  otherwise  might  never  be  obtained. 

It  is  probable  that  we  should  have  this  kind  of 
thing  among  the  Italians  in  America  even  if  the  Nea- 
politan Camorra  and  the  Sicilian  Mafia  had  never 
existed,  for  it  is  the  precise  kind  of  crime  that  seems 


240       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

to  be  spontaneously  generated  among  a  suspicious, 
ignorant,  and  superstitious  people.  The  Italian  is 
keenly  alive  to  the  dramatic,  sensational,  and  pictu- 
resque; he  loves  to  intrigue,  and  will  imagine  plots 
against  him  when  none  exists.  If  an  Italian  is  late 
for  a  business  engagement  the  man  with  whom  he 
has  his  appointment  will  be  convinced  that  there  is 
some  conspiracy  afoot,  even  if  his  friend  has  merely 
been  delayed  by  a  block  on  the  subway.  Thus,  he 
is  a  good  subject  for  any  wily  lago  that  happens 
along.  The  Italians  in  America  are  the  most  thrifty 
of  all  our  immigrant  citizens.  In  five  years  their  de- 
posits in  the  banks  of  New  York  State  amounted  to 
over  one  hundred  million  dollars.  The  local  Italian 
crooks  avail  themselves  of  the  universal  fear  of  the 
vendetta,  and  let  it  be  generally  known  that  trouble 
will  visit  the  banker  or  importer  who  does  not  "  come 
across"  handsomely.  In  most  cases  these  Black 
Handers  are  ex-convicts  with  a  pretty  general  repu- 
tation as  "bad  men/7  It  is  not  necessary  for  them 
to  phrase  their  demands.  The  tradesman  who  is 
honored  with  a  morning  call  from  one  of  this  gentry 
does  not  need  to  be  told  the  object  of  the  visit.  The 
mere  presence  of  the  fellow  is  a  threat;  and,  if  it  is 
not  acceded  to,  the  front  of  the  building  will  probably 
be  blown  out  by  a  dynamite  bomb  in  the  course  of 
the  next  six  weeks — whenever  the  gang  of  which  the 
bad  man  is  the  leader  can  get  around  to  it.  And  the 
bad  man  may  perhaps  have  a  still  badder  man  who  is 
preying  upon  him.  Very  often  one  of  these  leaders 
or  bosses  will  run  two  or  three  groups,  all  operating 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       241 

at  the  same  time.  They  meet  in  the  back  rooms  of 
saloons  behind  locked  doors,  under  pretence  of  wish- 
ing to  play  a  game  of  zecchinetta  unmolested,  or  in  the 
gloaming  in  the  middle  of  a  city  park  or  undeveloped 
property  on  the  outskirts.  There  the  different  mem- 
bers of  the  gang  get  their  orders  and  stations,  and 
perhaps  a  few  dollars  advance  wages.  It  is  naturally 
quite  impossible  to  guess  the  number  of  successful 
and  unsuccessful  attempts  at  blackmail  among  Ital- 
ians, as  the  amount  of  undiscovered  crime  through- 
out the  country  at  large  is  incomputable.  No  word 
of  it  comes  from  the  lips  of  the  victims,  who  are  in 
mortal  terror  of  the  vendetta — of  meeting  some 
casual  stranger  on  the  street  who  will  significantly 
draw  the  forefinger  of  his  right  hand  across  his 
throat. 

There  is  rather  more  chance  to  find  and  convict 
a  kidnapper  than  a  bomb-thrower,  so  that,  as  a  means 
of  extortion,  child-snatching  is  less  popular  than  the 
mere  demand  for  the  victim's  money  or  his  life.  On 
the  other  hand  it  is  probably  much  more  effective  in 
accomplishing  its  result.  But  America  will  not  stand 
for  kidnapping,  and,  although  the  latter  occurs  oc- 
casionally, the  number  of  cases  is  insignificant  com- 
pared with  those  in  which  dynamite  is  the  chief  fac- 
tor. In  1908,  there  were  forty-four  bomb  outrages 
reported  in  New  York  City.  There  were  seventy  ar- 
rests and  nine  convictions.  During  the  present  year 
(1911)  there  have  been  about  sixty  bomb  cases,  but 
there  have  been  none  since  September  8,  since  De- 
tective Carrao  captured  Rizzi,  a  picdott',  in  the  act 


242       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

of  lighting  a  bomb  in  the  hallway  of  a  tenement 
house. 

This  case  of  Rizzi  is  an  enlightening  one  for  the 
student  of  social  conditions  in  New  York,  for  Rizzi 
was  no  Orsini,  not  even  a  Guy  Fawks,  nor  yet  was  he 
an  outlaw  in  his  own  name.  He  was  simply  a  picciotf 
(pronounced  "pish-ot")  who  did  what  he  was  told 
in  order  that  some  other  man  who  did  know  why 
might  carry  out  a  threat  to  blow  up  somebody 
who  had  refused  to  be  blackmailed.  It  is  practi- 
cally impossible  to  get  inside  the  complicated  emo- 
tions and  motives  that  lead  a  man  to  become  an 
understudy  in  dynamiting.  Rizzi  probably  got  well 
paid;  at  any  rate,  he  was  constantly  demonstrating 
his  fitness  "to  do  big  things  in  a  big  way,"  and  be 
received  into  the  small  company  of  the  elect — to  go 
forth  and  blackmail  on  his  own  hook  and  hire  some 
other  pictiott'  to  set  off  the  bombs. 

Whoever  the  capo  maestra  that  Rizzi  worked  for, 
he  was  not  only  a  deep-dyed  villain,  but  a  brainy 
one.  The  gang  hired  a  store  and  pretended  to  be  en- 
gaged in  the  milk  business.  They  carried  the  bombs 
in  the  steel  trays  holding  the  milk  bottles  and  cans, 
and,  in  the  costume  of  peaceful  vendors  of  the  lacteal 
fluid,  they  entered  the  tenements  and  did  their  dam- 
age to  such  as  failed  to  pay  them  tribute.  The  man- 
ner of  his  capture  was  dramatic.  A  real  milkman 
for  whom  Rizzi  had  worked  in  the  past  was  marked 
out  for  slaughter.  He  had  been  blown  up  twice  al- 
ready. While  he  slept  his  wife  heard  some  one  mov- 
ing in  the  hall.  Looking  put  through  a  small  window, 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       243 

she  saw  the  ex-employee  fumble  with  something  and 
then  turn  out  the  gas  on  the  landing.  Her  husband, 
awakened  by  her  exit  and  return,  asked  sleepily  what 
the  matter  was. 

"I  saw  Rizzi  out  in  the  hall,"  she  answered.  "It 
was  funny — he  put  out  the  light!" 

In  a  moment  the  milkman  was  out  of  bed  and  gaz- 
ing, with  his  wife,  into  the  street.  They  saw  Rizzi 
come  down  with  his  tray  and  pass  out  of  sight.  So 
did  a  couple  of  Italian  detectives  from  Head-quarters 
who  had  been  following  him  and  now,  at  his  very 
heels,  watched  him  enter  another  tenement,  take  a 
bomb  from  his  tray,  and  ignite  a  time  fuse.  They 
caught  him  with  the  thing  alight  in  his  hand.  Mean- 
while the  other  bomb  had  gone  off  and  blown  up  the 
milkman's  tenement. 

There  is  some  ancient  history  in  regard  to  these 
matters  which  ought  to  be  retold  in  the  light  of 
modern  knowledge;  for  example,  the  case  of  Patti, 
the  Sicilian  banker.  He  had  a  prosperous  institu- 
tion in  which  were  deposited  the  earnings  of  many 
Italians,  poor  and  wealthy.  Lupo's  gang  got  after 
him  and  demanded  a  large  sum  f  or  "  protection . "  But 
Patti  had  a  disinclination  to  give  up,  and  refused. 
At  the  time  his  refusal  was  attributed  to  high  civic 
ideals,  and  he  was  lauded  as  a  hero.  Anyhow,  he  de- 
fied the  Mafia,  laid  in  a  stock  of  revolvers  and  rifles, 
and  rallied  his  friends  around  him.  But  the  news  got 
abroad  that  Lupo  was  after  Patti,  and  there  was 
a  run  on  Patti's  bank.  It  was  a  big  run,  and  some  of 
the  depositors  gesticulated  and  threatened — for  Patti 


244       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

couldn't  pay  it  all  out  in  a  minute.  Then  there  was 
some  kind  of  a  row,  and  Patti  and  his  friends  (claim- 
ing that  the  Mafia  had  arrived)  opened  fire,  killing 
one  man  and  wounding  others.  The  newspapers 
praised  Patti  for  a  brave  and  stalwart  citizen.  May- 
be he  was.  After  the  smoke  had  cleared  away,  how- 
ever, he  disappeared  with  all  his  depositors'  money, 
and  now  it  has  been  discovered  that  the  man  he  killed 
was  a  depositor  and  not  a  Black  Hander.  The  police 
are  still  looking  for  him. 

This  case  seems  a  fairly  good  illustration  of  the 
endless  opportunity  for  wrong-doing  possible  in  a 
state  of  society  where  extortion  is  permitted  to  ex- 
ist— where  the  laws  are  not  enforced — where  there 
is  a  "higher"  sanction  than  the  code.  Whether  Patti 
was  a  good  or  a  bad  man,  he  might  easily  have  killed 
an  enemy  in  revenge  and  got  off  scot-free  on  the 
mere  claim  that  the  other  was  blackmailing  him; 
just  as  an  American  in  some  parts  of  our  country  can 
kill  almost  anybody  and  rely  on  being  acquitted  by 
a  jury,  provided  he  is  willing  to  swear  that  the  de- 
ceased had  made  improper  advances  to  his  wife. 

The  prevention  of  kidnapping,  bomb-throwing,  and 
the  other  allied  manifestations  of  the  Black  Hand 
depends  entirely  upon  the  activity  of  the  police — 
particularly  the  Italian  detectives,  who  should  form 
an  inevitable  part  of  the  force  in  every  large  city. 
The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  we  never  dreamed  of  a 
real  "Italian  peril"  (or,  more  accurately,  a  real  "Si- 
cilian peril")  until  about  the  year  1900.  Then  we 
woke  up  to  what  was  going  on — it  had  already  gone 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       245 

a  good  way— and  started  in  to  put  an  end  to  it. 
Petrosino  did  put  an  end  to  much  of  it,  and  at  the 
present  time  it  is  largely  sporadic.  Yet  there  will 
always  be  a  halo  about  the  heads  of  the  real  Camor- 
rists  and  Mafiusi — the  Alfanos  and  the  Rapis — in 
the  eyes  of  their  simple-minded  countrymen  in  the 
United  States. 

Occasionally  one  of  these  big  guns  arrives  at  an 
American  port  of  entry,  coming  first-class  via  Havre 
or  Liverpool,  having  made  his  exit  from  Italy  without 
a  passport.  Then  the  Camorrists  of  New  York  and 
Brooklyn  get  busy  for  a  month  or  so,  raising  money 
for  the  boys  at  home  and  knowing  that  they  will 
reap  their  reward  if  ever  they  go  back.  The  popular 
method  of  collecting  is  for  the  principal  capo  maestra, 
or  temporary  boss  of  Mulberry  Street,  to  "give"  a 
banquet  at  which  all  "friends"  must  be  present — 
at  five  dollars  per  head.  No  one  cares  to  be  conspic- 
uous by  reason  of  his  absence,  and  the  hero  returns 
to  Italy  with  a  large-sized  draft  on  Naples  or  Pal- 
ermo. 

Meanwhile  the  criminal  driven  out  of  his  own 
country  has  but  to  secure  transportation  to  New 
York  to  find  himself  in  a  rich  field  for  his  ac- 
tivities; and  once  he  has  landed  and  observed  the 
demoralization  often  existing  from  political  or  other 
reasons  in  our  local  forces  of  police  and  our  uncertain 
methods  of  administering  justice  (particularly  where 
the  defendant  is  a  foreigner),  he  rapidly  becomes 
convinced  that  America  is  not  only  the  country  of 
liberty  but  of  license — to  commit  crime. 


246       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

Most  Italian  crooks  come  to  the  United  States  not 
merely  some  time  or  other,  but  at  intervals.  Prac- 
tically all  of  the  Camorrist  defendants  on  trial  at 
Viterbo  have  been  in  the  United  States,  and  all  will 
be  here  soon  again,  after  their  discharge,  unless  steps 
are  taken  to  keep  them  out.  Luckily,  it  is  a  fact  that 
so  much  has  been  written  in  American  newspapers 
and  periodicals  in  the  past  few  years  about  the  dan- 
ger of  the  Black  Hand  and  the  criminals  from  south 
Italy  that  the  authorities  on  the  other  side  have  al- 
lowed a  rumor  to  be  circulated  that  the  climate  of 
South  America  is  peculiarly  adapted  to  persons  whose 
lungs  have  become  weakened  from  confinement  in 
prison.  In  fact,  at  the  present  time  more  Italian 
criminals  seek  asylum  in  the  Argentine  than  in  the 
United  States.  Theoretically,  of  course,  as  no  con- 
vict can  procure  a  passport,  none  of  them  leave  Italy 
at  all — but  that  is  one  of  the  humors  of  diplomacy. 
The  approved  method  among  the  continental  coun- 
tries of  Europe  of  getting  rid  of  their  criminals  is  to 
induce  them  to  "move  on."  A  lot  of  them  keep 
"moving  on"  until  they  land  in  America. 

Of  course,  the  police  should  be  able  to  cope  with 
the  Black  Hand  problem,  and,  with  a  free  use  of  Ital- 
ian detectives  who  speak  the  dialects  and  know  their 
quarry,  we  may  gradually,  in  the  course  of  fifteen 
years  or  so,  see  the  entire  disappearance  of  this 
particular  criminal  phenomenon.  But  an  ounce 
of  prevention  is  worth  several  tons  of  cure.  Pet- 
rosino  claimed — not  boastfully — that  he  could,  with 
proper  deportation  laws  behind  him,  exterminate  the 


THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA       247 

Black  Hand  throughout  the  United  States  in  three 
months. 

But,  as  far  as  the  future  is  concerned,  a  solution  of 
the  problem  exists — a  solution  so  simple  that  only  a 
statesman  could  explain  why  it  has  not  been  adopted 
long  years  ago.  The  statutes  in  force  at  Ellis  Island 
permit  the  exclusion  of  immigrants  who  have  been 
guilty  of  crimes  involving  moral  turpitude  in  their 
native  land,  but  do  not  provide  for  the  compulsory 
production  of  the  applicants7  "penal  certificate" 
under  penalty  of  deportation.  Every  Italian  emi- 
grant is  obliged  to  secure  a  certified  document  from 
the  police  authorities  of  his  native  place,  giving  his 
entire  criminal  record  or  showing  that  he  has  had 
none,  and  without  it  he  can  not  obtain  a  passport. 
For  several  years  efforts  have  been  made  to  insert 
in  our  immigration  laws  a  provision  that  every  immi- 
grant from  a  country  issuing  such  a  certificate  must 
produce  it  before  he  can  be  sure  of  admission  to  the 
United  States.  If  this  proposed  law  should  be  passed 
by  Congress  the  exclusion  of  Italian  criminals  would 
be  almost  automatic.  But  if  it  or  some  similar  pro- 
vision fails  to  become  law,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  we  may  well  anticipate  a  Camorra  of  some  sort 
in  every  locality  in  our  country  having  a  large  Italian 
population.  Yet  government  moves  slowly,  and  ac- 
tion halts  while  diplomacy  sagely  shakes  its  head 
over  the  official  cigarette. 

A  bill  amending  the  present  law  to  this  effect  has 
received  the  enthusiastic  approval  of  the  immigra- 
tion authorities  and  of  the  President.  At  first  the 


248       THE  MALA  VITA  IN  AMERICA 

Italian  officials  here  and  abroad  expressed  themselves 
as  heartily  in  sympathy  with  this  proposed  addition 
to  the  excluded  classes;  but,  once  the  bill  was  drawn 
and  submitted  to  Congress,  some  of  these  same  offi- 
cials entered  violent  protests  against  it,  on  the  ground 
that  such  a  provision  discriminated  unfairly  against 
Italy  and  the  other  countries  issuing  such  certifi- 
cates. The  result  of  this  has  been  to  delay  all  action 
on  the  bill  which  is  now  being  held  in  committee. 
Meanwhile  the  Black  Hander  is  arriving  almost  daily, 
and  we  have  no  adequate  laws  to  keep  him  out. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

ANXIOUS  for  the  actual  facts,  the  writer  asked  an  Italian 
friend  to  secure  an  interview  with  Cavalier  Tarantelli,  Questor 
of  Florence,  who  for  a  long  time  was  a  functionary  of  the  Pub- 
lic Safety  in  Naples,  and  testified  in  this  capacity,  at  Viterbo, 
on  August  9,  1911.  In  discussing  the  power  of  the  Ca- 
morra,  the  Questor,  after  having  given  it  as  his  opinion  that 
the  actual  criminal  organization  had  lost  most  of  its  unity, 
said:  "At  present  there  exist  what  are  called  ' combricole  di 
quartiere'  (conventicles  of  the  quarters)  small  secret  associations 
of '  camorristi '  belonging  to  the  same  quarter  of  Naples.  Nat- 
urally the  different  combricole  in  the  different  quarters  of  Na- 
ples assist  each  other,  as  likewise  do  the  different  chiefs  of  the 
quarters.  Perhaps  there  is  still  a  kind  of  hierarchy  among 
the  chiefs  as  there  may  still  exist  a  hierarchy  among  the '  ca- 
morristi'  in  the  different  quarters.  These  *  camorristi '  are, 
as  a  rule,  bad  characters,  whose  chief  characteristics  are  im- 
morality and  overbearing  insolence,  and  who  live  accordingly. 
They  impose  upon  women  and  get  money  out  of  them;  they 
practice  usury;  they  receive  and  hide  stolen  things.  Naples 
has  now  a  special  and  intense  criminality.  The  *  camorristi' 
are  at  present  almost  all  habitual  criminals.  But  the  real  so- 
called  'act  of  camorra'  (atto  d'camorra)  is  extortion,  namely, 
a  price  imposed  upon  those  who  fear  individual  or  collective 
imposition,  either  occult  or  open,  on  the  part  of  the  'Ca- 
morra.'  Every  morning  a  'camorrista'  will  go  to  the  shop- 
keepers and  tradesmen  of  the  quarter  (quartiere)  and  collect 
the  price  paid  by  him  to  be  let  alone.  There  are  instances 
even  nowadays  of  people  who  go  to  the  chief  'camorrista* 
of  their  quarter  in  order  to  have  their  persons  and  property 
protected.  This  protection,  however,  is  now  more  apparent 
than  real.  For  instance,  it  is  much  more  difficult  now  than  it 
was  formerly  to  find  people  who  try  to  recover  stolen  property 

251 


252  APPENDIX 

by  having  recourse  to  the '  Camorra '  rather  than  to  the  police. 
The  'camorristi'  are  extremely  numerous  in  Naples;  at 
funeral  processions,  for  example,  you  may  see  thousands  of 
them.  Songs  are  sung  beneath  the  windows  of  prisons  by  the 
friends  and  relatives  of  the  prisoners  as  a  means  of  communi- 
cating with  the  latter.  But  this  custom  of  'the  songs'  is  now 
disappearing  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the '  dichiaramenti* 
(kinds  of  challenges),  and  of  the  tribunal  of  the  'Camorra/ 
Some  large  meetings  of  'camorristi'  still  take  place  now  and 
then.  They  will  meet  in  some  deserted  place  in  the  country 
far  away  from  the  city  or  among  the  mountains.  I  shall  not 
deny  that  the  judiciary  of  Naples  is  somewhat  different  from 
that  of  Northern  Italy.  The  former  is  sometimes  exceedingly 
indulgent,  perhaps  corrupt;  that  will  explain  the  influence  of 
the  'Camorra/  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  state  that  magis- 
trates in  Naples  are  at  times  in  awe  of  the  '  camorristi, '  and 
especially  of  their  friends  who  always  appear  as  perfectly 
honorable  persons.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  police  now  endeavor 
to  destroy  the  '  Camorra/  a  thing  which  they  would  not  even 
have  dreamt  of  a  few  years  ago,  and  we  must  not  forget  that 
the  police  consist  for  the  most  part  of  men  from  the  South 
of  Italy.  That  there  are  officials  and  agents  taking  bribes 
from  secret  associations  for  delinquency  is  well  known,  but, 
of  course,  that  does  not  occur  in  Naples  or  in  Italy  alone. 
In  Naples  the  'Camorra'  places  itself  at  the  disposal  of  those 
who  pay  it,  even  in  the  case  of  elections.  As  a  rule,  it  is  the 
candidates  of  the  conservative  parties  who  avail  themselves  of 
the  'Camorra/  Thus,  you  see,  even  ministers  and  prefects 
may  avail  themselves  of  it!  At  all  events,  these  deplorable 
facts  are  becoming  less  and  less  frequent.  Let  us  hope  they 
may  completely  disappear!  To  the  Socialist  party,  however, 
must  be  given  the  credit  of  fighting  against  the  'Camorra'  to 
the  best  of  its  ability." 

This  is  an  extraordinary  admission  for  a  public  functionary 
to  make,  and  it  is  only  fair  to  the  Questor  to  state  that  his 
interview  was  not  made  intentionally  for  publication.  It  is 
what  would  be  called  in  law  an  "admission  against  interest" 
and  is  evidence  of  the  weightiest  character.  One  can  read 
between  the  lines  that  he  but  hints  at  the  real  state  of  things. 


APPENDIX  253 

His  opinion  that  the  solidarity  of  the  Camorra  has  been  greatly 
weakened  seems  to  be  borne  out  by  many  other  evidences. 
For  example,  the  depositions  of  the  informer  Abattemaggio 
are  filled  with  detailed  accounts  of  how  various  local  "camor- 
risti"  quarrelled  over  the  division  of  their  petty  spoils,  tricked 
and  cheated  one  another,  and  often  betrayed  each  other  to 
the  police.  The  day  of  the  real  camorrista, — he  of  the  swift 
dagger,  the  man  of  "heart," — seems  to  be  over  and  to  have 
given  place  to  an  era  of  filthy  traders  in  vice,  petty  grafters, 
blackmailers,  and  cheap  thieves.  But  popular  imagination 
still  surrounds  these  with  the  halo  of  romance  and  regards  the 
Camorra  as  "the  friend  of  the  people." 


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